


Sons of the Path

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Outlands [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Complete and utter bastardization of physics, Dimensional Magic, Fantasy, Fish out of Water, M/M, Mathematical Magic, history put through a blender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-03-16 09:51:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13633863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: Ryou has gotten somewhat acclimatized to Sura and ancient Assyria. As much as a modern Japanese businessman can be expected to. Now he can finally relax.Or alternatively, he can finally find himself in the middle of a war over three millennia in the making.





	1. Chapter 1

The flood season had started a few days ago, bringing with it cool weather and the scent of mulching vegetation. And today was the day the Per Gathas chose to respond to King Leyam's invitation. It was likely they'd waited until the time Leyam could have reasonably expected visits by foreign dignitaries to be impossible for a few weeks due to high waters, debris in the river and a lot of mud. But those facts did not concern visitors who could appear out of thin air right in front of the God Gate. Ryou, who could do the kind of mental judo known to all business managers, knew that was exactly the point the Per Gathas were making. He was ready to bet they could have scheduled their visit last week while the path from Mooncrest to the Walkway of Sura was still perfectly passable, but that entrance would have had no way near the same impact. 

From the way Leyam smiled shark-like at the news, the timing and the means had not been lost on him either. But he also had one hell of a card to play in his turn.

"I’ll leave you to finish your repast," he announced as he got to his feet, shooing away the kneeling slave holding his breakfast plate in lieu of table. He stalked out of the royal dining room (the small, private one, only twice the size of Ryou's apartment back in Tokyo) with a predatory step that was at odds with his purple skirt and flowing red top crisscrossed with purple veils.

Darius was sitting on the raised stone hearth of the fireplace in the middle of the room. A small blaze had been lit at its center to beat away the humidity and coolness that now inhabited the stone palace. His plate was resting on the slate beside him. He pushed it away with a frown that made the servants hesitate to move forward to retrieve it.

"We're fine, thank you," Ryou told them. Two weeks in the royal palace had not begun to habituate him to talking authoritatively to anybody. He addressed them as if they were hotel staff, they obeyed him with the deference accorded to princes and foreign dignitaries, and Ryou tried not to let it bug him too much.

"You don't need to worry," said Darius as soon as the attendants had left. "It'll be fine."

His words were self-assured, but Ryou observed the way his lover was cracking his knuckles and frowning blindly at a corner of the room, and so instead of going over the list of reasons why this might not be fine at all, he only said, "I'm sure it will be."

"Leyam has guaranteed your safety. They can't do anything. They wouldn't dare." There was a personally threatening note to that last sentence that had less to do with Leyam's assurances and more to do with the way Ghan the Beast dealt with his enemies. This was why Leyam had dismissed his brother’s suggestion that they both be present at this initial meeting. Leyam was a calculating man who used the right tool for the right task; he used his own abilities for subtlety, and his brother to destroy those for whom subtlety was not good enough. 

"They'll be in talks most of the morning," Darius added, finally looking back at Ryou. "Want to go out riding? I promised I would show you Sura from the north when the weather cooled. I’ll roust the men. We can be up Mount Ytemen and back by the middle of the afternoon.”

Ryou translated that as, 'I want to give you something to distract you, and I know how you love to explore and ask all sorts of questions.'

“That’d be great,” he answered. He had the feeling Darius might need distracting as well.

 

 

The slave who had fetched Ryou as soon as the latter had gotten off his horse ushered him in through the door and closed the large double panels behind him. Ryou walked forward, feet brushing the mosaic as he crossed the banquet hall that felt twice its size now that it was empty, and stopped near the throne on its dais.

“You wanted to see me?” he asked. 'My King' didn't come naturally to Ryou's tongue, and Leyam had picked up on that and let Ryou know that they didn't have to stand on ceremony when it was just the two of them. 

Leyam was in an even more startling dress than this morning, cloth of gold falling in heavy pleats down the front, folded away from the shoulders and chest to allow the shimmering tight green silk bodice to peep through- and still revealing a lamentable lack of cleavage to go with it. But the gold-decorated wig was perched on the chair's armrest and the superb garment was carelessly rucked by the foot he’d drawn up onto the low throne’s cushion. His elbow was propped against the gold-painted wood and ivory, chin in his hand as he stared out through one of the windows at the mountains. The way his eyes were heavily lined with khol made the stare a bit more meaningful than it probably was.

"Hmm, sit down," he said, the words compressed by the palm pressing into his jaw. 

Ryou obeyed the flip of a finger that'd accompanied that, climbed the stairs and sat on a cushion at the edge of the dais in front of the low throne. 

“Ashur and Enlil, not like that,” groused Leyam, looking around. “That makes my knees ache to watch you.”

Ryou shifted from Seiza position to sit down on his butt with his feet resting on the steps of the dais at a comfortable angle. 

“That’s better. My brother...?”

“Taking care of the horses.” 

“As good a job for him as any,” said Leyam. “Though I bet he gave the task to one of his men the instant you left, and is now pacing outside the door, giving it and the guard that famous dark look of his, waiting for you and making sure I’m not selling you hand and foot bound to the Per Gathas.”

Right into the heart of the matter then, thought Ryou. 

Leyam tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “In the twelvedays I’ve known you, Ryou, I’ve confirmed that you are an intelligent man, and for a complete stranger to our lands, you’re astute. So allow me to get down to the gristle and bone of our current affair. The Sons of Zaratusra want you. Magians of your power are inducted into their ranks whether they will it or not. Or so it is said, and since I've never seen a magian of your stature running around without the winged crest on his chest, I do have to give the rumor some credence. The man who appeared this morning is no less than Blessed Haaskoning himself, the current leader of the Per Gathas, possibly the single most powerful man in the Outlands. He came expressly to remind me, in a diplomatic way, that the Grand Design is the exclusive domain of the Sons of Zaratusra, and not to be meddled with for fear of wreaking all kinds of chaos and havoc upon us all. Any king who thought to retain his own magian would soon find the regular Paths barred to him and any of his countrymen. As you can imagine, this is a very hefty threat."

Ryou said nothing, waiting. Leyam’s mouth quirked. “Marble statue,” he muttered, “as always. So what do you think I said?”

“It would be disrespectful of me to hazard a guess,” said Ryou, who didn’t want to jump through Leyam’s little hoops today.

“No fun. I said, just as diplomatically and with as many words, that you were not a court retainer or my pet magian, but a stranger from Ezo who was bedding my brother.”

Ryou’s eyes flickered shut briefly. Yes, Leyam would say exactly that. 

“This is where it got amusing, as I’d foreseen. Haaskoning said, in a flowery way, that he didn’t give a bloody damn what you were doing with my brother. I answered that before dismissing the matter so easily, he should know that my brother was rather attached to you, and in an exceedingly bad mood after a recent problem in Kaides which, incidentally, I’d wanted to talk to the Per Gathas about. As you can imagine, the dice were now coming up with my numbers.”

“It wasn’t the Per Gathas who ambushed Darius, and you know that,” said Ryou. Then he amended, “more importantly, this magian leader has to realize you know that, or you would never have let him near you.”

“Yes, but he cannot prove that I know that,” said Leyam with a delighted grin. “Whereas I have a dozen soldiers with not enough imagination to lie convincingly - and my brother as well, no less - who can tell anyone who cares to listen how the Sons of Zaratusra kidnapped the leader of my forces from the field of battle, thus putting the whole siege of Essin in peril. You look as if you're about to object in that polite way of yours as soon as I stop talking. You already knew I had this leverage.” 

“Well yes, but...you would use it to protect me?” Ryou asked guardedly. “It’s not something you’ll be able to brandish over their heads after today.”

“Clever man. Yes, that’s correct. Once they leave here and Haaskoning and I give each other the olive branch of friendship on the steps of Ashur's temple, I can’t really bring this matter up again.”

“Isn’t there some other advantage that you want? “ 

Leyam tapped his rouged lips with a thoughtful finger. “Nothing that this coin can acquire. It has limited use at this point in time. There are things I would buy with it, but I do not even know their name. Whereas 'back off from my brother's friend and I won't press the matter' was easy to ask for."

"Then I owe you a great debt."

"Yes you do."

"That I won’t be able to repay," Ryou pointed out, "since I cannot use my magic reliably, and the Per Gathas would retaliate if I used it for you. There’s nothing I can do for you."

"You can keep my brother happy," leered Leyam. 

Ryou favored the King with a cool look.

Leyam grinned, but his eyes were focused on a point above Ryou's head and when he spoke, it was softly and without the usual twisty wit. "I think you’ll find a way to repay me, Ujiie Ryou. There’s something going on. Our history is rich with tales of strange monsters, usually with some demigod to beat them into bone soup tagged onto the story. Times of Trouble, as our ancestors called it. I always thought those days belonged to the past, but the last two years have seen odd things happen in our regions. An entire village emptied of living things overnight, even insects, gone without a trace. Wells poisoned, cattle dying in droves, misshapen children born, fires that burn without fuel and die without charring anything. Travelers and their Passer disappear along the Paths, never to be seen again, and odd shadows roam the borders, strange chimera, men with the head of animals, snakes bearing lion manes, goats with lizard scales. You name it and some drunkard in a tavern has seen it. Maybe this is just more of the usual chaos that is bred out of war, but I'm thinking not, no. No, there is something going on, and you, Ryou, will be part of it. I would not be all that happy having my brother close to you in these circumstances, but I believe he was a part of it before you ever appeared, so...so I want to keep you here, where I can see things develop and take whatever steps will protect Darius, his friend and my country, and hopefully give me some added leverage in Per Gathas affairs." 

"Thank you," said Ryou, just about all he could say. 

"Of course _they_ want you to come with them and join their ranks," said Leyam dryly. "And they also want to talk to you before they leave."

"They what?" asked Ryou, startled.

"They essentially came here for you. They won't leave without seeing you. Oh, don't worry, they won't take you anywhere by force. I did point out that were you to enter a room and then mysteriously never leave it again, I would be very, very displeased. Haaskoning said that all he wants to do is talk to you. They don't know where you're from, so they cannot use your family's lives as leverage," Leyam added in what he probably thought was reassurance, "and the only person you are close to in Assyria is not someone they can touch with impunity, so really, what can they threaten you with?"

"I would rather not find out."

"Unfortunately you must," said Leyam, sounding immensely curious rather than regretful. "Don't worry. Haaskoning is an interesting, enlightened man, and he seemed honestly desirous to have a civilized conversation with you and nothing more. It will be a mere sunset stroll in the gardens."

"If by that you mean it will be easy, then it will be the first thing in the Outlands that is," Ryou muttered to himself once he was dismissed and the heavy doors had closed behind him. 

 

 

The Sun Room was a gazebo perched on a high corner of the palace's building reserved for official business, a bird's nest of pillars surrounding a circular marble floor and a round table. Refreshments had appeared on the latter, as they always did wherever anyone of importance was likely to be present; a pitcher of watered wine, flatbread, cheese and a bowl of apples smaller than Ryou's palm. Most of the fruit found in these regions were half the size of their Inland versions. On the other hand, they'd been specifically selected, grafted, bred and propagated to be tasty and durable.

The late afternoon was pleasant with the coolness brought by the floods. A breeze wandered by as Ryou stepped through the door. It fluttered the brown robes of the cowled figure nearby.

"Hello," said Ryou, eyeing the figure. "May I come in?"

The hooded figure said nothing. But a cheerful, "Oh yes, please. Sorry, I'm over here," drew Ryou's attention away from the silent magian and to the other side of the marble table. A portly man in his late fifties straightened up from where he'd been crouched out of sight. 

"What are you doing?" asked Darius abruptly from behind Ryou.

"Oh, just admiring these mosaics. I don’t come to your lands frequently enough, Lord Ghan. Every time I do, I am amazed by the finesse of the work. Are these green ones here malachite?"

"Do I look like a stonemason to you?" said Darius with his usual approach to diplomacy. "Are you Haaskoning?" 

"Ah, yes." The man's hair was white, cut short and well combed, and his small salt-and-pepper beard was neatly trimmed, lining a nondescript face. He was dressed in the garb of his order, a long brown sleeveless tabard with the yellow winged circle symbol sewn onto the chest, a brown cowl over his shoulders, and beneath it all, an ankle-length white tunic. Blessed Haaskoning, leader of the most powerful force in the Outlands, had no mark to distinguish him from any other member of the Per Gathas. 

"That man over there is Illuminated Emiokarnage of the second circle," Haaskoning added. "He's here as my assistant." The hooded man bowed. 

Darius nodded curtly in return before turning back towards the magian leader. "I thought you were going to meet Ryou alone."

"Well yes," said Haaskoning with a faintly bemused smile as he looked at Darius. "So did I."

"I'm not going anywhere." Darius walked over to the marble table and leaned a hip against it in a clearly territorial move. "My king tells me you lot weren't behind the attempt to kill me in Kaides, so there is no bad blood between us at present. But I won't have you weighing into my home and threatening my friend in order to get him to go back to Asha Mainyu with you."

"That was not my intention at all," said Haaskoning, hands out in a placating gesture.

"Then there's no reason I can't stay," Darius concluded.

Haaskoning didn't answer directly, giving Ryou a weighing look instead. "We have not been formally introduced. By which name would you prefer to be addressed, sir?"

"You may call me Ryou," said Ryou, not looking forward to the way the locals chopped up 'Ujiie'. "I apologize if Darius and I appear a little blunt," his civility forced him to add, "but I don’t see what there is that you wish to discuss with me that my friend cannot hear."

"You cannot?" Haaskoning shook his head. "Ai, that's even worse than I thought."

Ryou and Darius exchanged quick looks, equally puzzled. 

"What are you talking about?" Darius groused.

"I'm talking of the Mysteries of the Grand Design, Lord Ghan. I'm talking about the Lore of the Gathas. This man may be your friend, but he is also a magian, and he has knowledge that should not be shared with the layman. In turn, what I am about to tell him should not reach the ear of the non-initiated. As such, our conversation must remain private."

"No," said Darius, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Haaskoning gave Ryou a beseeching glance. Ryou returned it neutrally. He could wish Darius would be a bit more diplomatic about it, but Ryou knew what this attitude stemmed from. Darius was tense. This was not a situation he could control, no attacking army or a threat of the material world. All he knew of the Per Gathas was hearsay and superstition, some rather grim. Ryou for his part didn't mind having his lover here. In addition to moral support, Darius, the king's brother, was his guarantee of safety here in Sura. And if the Beast of Assyria's powerful presence put this smooth, civilized magian off his stride, then Haaskoning might let slip some extra information that he would otherwise not share, information Ryou desperately needed and had a feeling he was going to have to bargain hard for. 

"I can ask Emiokarnage to leave," Haaskoning suggested helpfully.

"You can do that," Darius conceded, "but I'm not going anywhere."

"Some of the things we may discuss are magical in nature, and may confuse you."

"That's a given," snorted Darius, "but as long as I can hear the complete lack of threats, I'm fine with most of your magical conversation going right over my head."

"That is something I can guarantee," said Haaskoning with a strange smile, and there was such certitude in his voice that Ryou felt a chill. "The secrets of my order constrain me, I'm afraid. This conversation will be held in privacy."

"I just told you I'm not going anywhere."

"Oh, you misunderstand me. You're quite free to stay or go, Lord Ghan. I'm just telling you this conversation will be held in privacy," said Haaskoning, before touching first his chest then his forehead with the fingers of his left hand while murmuring three words beneath his breath that Ryou did not catch.

Ryou _felt_ something. It was subtle, hard to define, but it brushed his mind and swept through it for just an instant.

"Darius, careful," he said sharply. 

Darius stiffened and twisted around to stare at Ryou in surprise and alarm. A lot of surprise and alarm, more than Ryou's curt warning should have generated. 

"What?" Ryou whispered, alarmed in turn. 

Darius's jaw worked helplessly, and then he said-

\- something that made no sense at all. A language with gutturals that sounded jarringly alien to Ryou coming from his lover's mouth.

After a split second stare, they both spun on Haaskoning, who had the gall to give them a shrug that was almost, if not quite, apologetic.

A chair crashed to the floor as Darius surged around the table- he halted after only two steps, fingers gripping the marble. Darius might use his looks, reputation and bluntness to give an appearance of ferocity and brutality that was to his advantage, but Ryou was one of the people who'd seen beneath that, who knew Darius was considerably more in control than he let on, and was quite smart enough to see they'd been checkmated and that violence could only turn against them. Besides, Leyam had impressed upon them that the powerful leader of the Per Gathas could be given a little attitude but nothing more concrete, and he'd forbidden his brother to go to the interview armed. From the way Darius was clutching his belt where the hilt of his sword was normally tied, that'd been a good call...

Darius spat out a few words. Haaskoning responded calmly in a different language, Ryou could tell that much, even if he couldn't make that out either. Darius scowled, caught short. He could hear the same thing, it seemed. At least it was a language he knew, if not well, by the look on his face. He scowled at Haaskoning, fingers still gripping his belt where his sword normally resided, but then he turned towards Ryou. He started to speak...caught himself, mouth turning down at the corners, and pointed over his shoulder at a bench along the gazebo's railing. Ryou nodded unhappily, a sentiment he could see echoed in Darius's eyes. Haaskoning might have just intended this move as a way to enforce privacy and as a subtle sort of threat, but it was a devastating one; a brutal reminder of all the things that separated them, starting with a common tongue...Darius, turning, let his hand make contact with Ryou's briefly, a reassurance. Then he made his way towards the bench.

"I had the feeling he would stick around anyway," sighed Haaskoning, "and also, I hope you speak English or else I am screwed."

Ryou stared blindly at his lover's retreating back for a couple of thunderous seconds. "What-...what did you say?" he croaked, finally turning to face the magian.

Haaskoning tilted his head, eyes wrinkling in concern. Ryou caught himself. He'd been so used to speaking Japanese and being understood...

"You speak English?" he repeated in that language.

"Yes, and I am glad to see you do to," said Haaskoning, smiling once more and digging around a deep pocket sown into the inside of his tabard. "Here is my card. This should make it clear." 

He was holding it out between two fingers. Ryou reached for it automatically with both hands. It was a little yellowed, obviously old. It said:

 

Casper Haaskoning

Haaskoning-Lendau  
Architectuur en landschap  
Barbarossastraat 28, 3452 Maastricht

 

Ryou found the seat next to him by feel, pulled it out and sat down heavily, still reading the card over and over again. Haaskoning pulled up a seat for himself opposite Ryou.

"You're from the Inlands."

"Yes. Maastricht, as you can see." 

"That's in Europe." 

"Yes, in the Netherlands. You are Japanese, ya?" The man spoke English with the precision of a foreigner, which only served to underline his accent. Ryou had learned English from an early age and could understand him well enough, though these last few years he'd mainly practiced the language in a business context.

"Yes. Ujiie Ryou, from Ujiie Standard and Trades, Tokyo. My apologies, I do have cards with me but I did not think to bring them to this meeting." Ryou was aware that the words coming out of his mouth were inane and as completely out of place as this little piece of cardboard, but his mental processes were still reeling about and couldn't come up with anything better.

"No matter, no matter. Do you think you could wave at Lord Ghan? He is getting...agitated over there."

Ryou snapped out of his daze and looked to the right where Darius was not getting agitated one bit, in fact he was remarkably still, hands hooked in his belt, poised at the edge of the bench with his eyes fixed on Ryou and emanating an alarming amount of lethal menace, probably in response to Ryou's stunned look. It was to be remembered that the palace was filled with guards who would instantly respond to the shout of their king's brother and would not wait for a diplomatic go ahead to do something excitable and irreversible. Ryou pulled himself together in record time and nodded, giving Darius a weak smile to say all was okay. Darius stared at him, searching Ryou's eyes, then he slowly leaned back against the bench, the tension around him decreasing not a whit.

"You have a fiercely loyal friend," said Haaskoning. 

Ryou nodded and handed the card back. "Please explain." He was once more composed, his voice businesslike. He'd been caught off balance twice now, and badly, but that was no reason to slip further. Ryou had already shamed his father in a dozen ways in the past month, but he was damned if he'd lose his grip during a business negotiation after all the president had taught him. 

"That is easy to explain. Like you, I am from the Inlands. I have been here for more than twenty five years. You, I believe, are a newcomer, though, ya? How long have you been in the Outlands as far as you can tell? I know time can be difficult to measure here-"

"Thirty five days."

"Ah, I see. You certainly arrive in an interesting place in so short a time," said Haaskoning with a look around the elegant Sun Room. "There is a rumor you saved Lord Ghan when Roman wonder-makers took him to an Inland temple for a sacrifice to Aten. I do love the way stories spread here...I take it most of that is, how do you say it in English, stuff and nonsense? Did you meet him Inland or was it elsewhere?"

"I met him in the no man's land at the border," Ryou said composedly, and then before this amiable manipulator could recommence his interrogation he added, "I'm amazed that you're an Inlander. How many are there in the Per Gathas?"

Haaskoning's easy demeanor hit a small hitch when he realized this was going to be tit for tat, not a one-way extraction of information. "Ah, you see, Ryou-"

"There are some things that only the initiated can know, is that what you were about to say? Sorry if I am rude, but please see this from my eyes. As you just said, there are lots of rumors and stories here. I have been told about the Per Gathas who capture magians to either kill them or force them into their cult-"

"Oh no, we-"

"And though you are very nice, I have to notice that you, an Inlander with no affiliation to anything in the Outlands, _are_ a part of the Per Gathas and you believe this 'initiated' credo, so much that you forcefully stopped my friend from listening to this conversation."

Ryou let a moment pass, mainly to outline the fact that Haaskoning had little he could retort to that statement.

"I won't ask you to go into any great secret, but at least a minimum of information?"

Haaskoning hmmmed and fell silent, gaze turned inwards, hands tucked beneath his brown tabard. Ryou waited patiently. The leader of the Per Gathas struck him as a man who thought twice to speak once, as they said in Assyria. 

"Very well, this much I can say to you," Haaskoning finally declared. "Inlanders cross to the Outlands often. That's how the Outlands were colonized. It's been some time since we've seen a large migration. The only one this century was in the ninety seventies by Inland calendar, when the population of a village in Sri Lanka found its way here. They were escaping from a civil war, if I remember. Only fifty people got across before the Path closed of itself. We have set them up in their own enclave very far from here, and they seem happy to be left alone for now. Paths through the Great Veil around the Inlands exist, but they open only very rarely. One of us stands guard over them, and we only let through those who have otherwise nothing else to lose...As I said, that is a rare phenomenon these days due to...circumstances. The Outlands have their own rhythms, ya? So most crossovers are not through naturally formed Paths, but through the abilities of single individuals."

"How can we do it without even knowing how? I mean, why us and not-..." But from the polite, final way Haaskoning had smiled, Ryou realized this was a deeper level of mystery, and he was not going to get this information unless he traded for it, if at all.

The magian continued as if nothing had been asked. "Inlander magians are rare. A few dozen every generation. Some die during the crossing or quickly after, I am sorry to say. But them that do not die, they find their way to the Per Gathas and from there they choose to stay with us, or go home. Often they go home. We make sure they understand it is, as my English friends say, a one-way ticket. What I mean is that if they return to the Outlands again, we will not help them back home a second time. We do not encourage exchanges between countries in the Outlands, and so much less with the Inlands itself. So they go back with a heavy secret nobody will believe, but the other choice is not nice either. These societies we come into contact with...But you, of all places you end up in Assyria and in the middle of a war, so you know what I'm talking about, ya? If you want to go home, this is something we can do for you."

"I'm fine where I am. Am I going to be inducted into the Per Gathas if I stay?" Ryou asked directly.

Haaskoning shook his head slowly. "You have been misinformed. It is true, that I am inviting you. I do wish you will join us. But we do not induct. We invite. Many times, we are begged. The Per Gathas means safety in these regions. May I ask why you seem so against the idea? Except for something that Lord Ghan might have told you in, sorry, but in ignorance?"

"I'm not saying I will never consider it," Ryou answered cautiously, "but right now I am only trying to understand my position here, and how these lands work." And more to the point, it was obvious from several things Haaskoning had said and done that the Per Gathas would require his total allegiance, and for Ryou that was not possible. His faith, as Assyrians would put it, was to Darius and by extension to Leyam and Assyria. He would not want to put himself into a position where he might be asked to work against their best interests. 

"The Per Gathas are more than safety, we deal with great powers, with things an intelligent man will want to study," said Haaskoning, who'd obviously thought he'd detected an opening there. "There are interesting futures open for powerful magian. Research into important magical matters, or observing and writing the history of the countries around us. If your inclination and power take you there, you could join Emiokarnage and me into the three Holy Circles, perhaps right to the highest. Other than one bad episode hundred of years ago, every leader of the Per Gathas since Zoroaster has been an Inlander."

"Is that so?" said Ryou calmly, covering the fact that he was quite surprised.

"Yes. Please keep that to yourself. This is a Mystery of my order."

"Why on earth would the Per Gathas choose Inlanders to lead them? Are we that strong?"

Haaskoning rubbed a finger up and down his beard, silent and thoughtful again. Finally he nodded cautiously. "Those who can break through the Veil without training, and who then have the will to stay here, are usually stronger than average magians, yes. But the reason one of us is leader is because of impartiality. The power of the leader is balanced by a council chosen from the five oldest surviving countries: Assyrian, Greek, Mauryan, Roman and Chinese, or the Empire of S'ung as it is known here."

"I see." Ryou turned this over in his mind, fitting all this information into a new world view. "I should have realized other Inlanders could find their way here, if I had."

"How did you find your way here?" asked Haaskoning, a reminder that this was an exchange.

"Right." Ryou rubbed the bridge of his nose, jostling his glasses. "I wish I could tell you more about how I got here, but it's mostly a mystery to me."

"Do not worry about the mechanics," said Haaskoning with a genial smile, and Ryou remembered that the blighter would know a lot more about it than he did. "Where did you cross over? Tokyo, you said?"

"Yes, about twenty minutes away from the Kabukichō district. It was completely by accident. Though there had to be some kind of outside force at work, because I crashed my car a few feet away from where Darius arrived."

"Hmm, I heard some of it from King Leyam," said Haaskoning. He was digging around in pocket sewn into the inside of his tabard. He'd already drawn out a small scroll and he now unstoppered a tiny inkpot inset into a wooden stand, and screwed a steel nib onto a wooden pen he'd produced. "I am sorry, I have to write this down. I am at the age where I should think of passing on my role to a younger man in a few years. My memory has become bad...Ah, there. So from what King Leyam said, his brother was attacked by, how do you say, impostors, who for some reason put him in the No Man's Land. Well, I can think of worse places they could put him, much worse, but that was probably the easiest to reach and the easiest way of making sure he would not come back."

"Who were they? Do you know?"

”I am afraid I do not, though I am as anxious as King Leyam to find out, sir, believe me," said Haaskoning as he bent over his parchment. Ryou could not tell if the man was lying or not. "It has been more than a hundred years since someone tried to involve us in a war between countries, and we could have gone a thousand more without such thing being done. But we will find them soon. So, you said you arrived at the same location as Lord Ghan in the border zone, ya?"

"Yes. Darius was fighting a Rajin Bher."

Haaskoning nodded without surprise. Leyam must have already filled him in.

"What are they?"

"That is something I cannot tell you."

"Because it's a Mystery? Or because you don't know?" challenged Ryou.

"Oh, we know, unfortunately. We know." Haaskoning lifted his head and for a brief instant the pleasant expression was gone, and the knowledge that looked out at Ryou chilled him. 

A moment of silence ended when Haaskoning nodded. "Please go on. You met Lord Ghan, and you both ran away, since you are both here, safe. Where did you go when you ran?"

"I took Darius to a hospital. He was injured."

"Huh?" 

The pen had skidded half a centimeter across the parchment. Haaskoning had been startled, though he'd tried to cover it. 

"A hospital? You went back Inland?"

"Yes. Once more, no idea how."

"....Really. Well, that is...surprising."

"Darius once mentioned it's harder to cross the Veil in that direction?"

"Yes...otherwise we'd have more Outlanders stumbling Inland. I...tell me, Ryou, you say you work for a trading company? What exactly do you do?"

"I am- was a financial manager of Institutional Securities, Japanese division."

"Oh." Haaskoning stared at his paper as if it contained some form of answer.

Ryou could say nothing, but that'd not get him very far. Whereas dropping more information might get him confirmation of something he'd wondered about. "The bit you may be missing is that I have a master's degree in advanced mathematics and geometry," he said slowly, watching the other man's reaction.

"Is that so," said Haaskoning after a few seconds. The nib was leaking ink on the parchment. 

"I take it that maths is important in this. You're an architect, you must have knowledge of geometry, physics and space too."

"Hmm. A Master's, you say." Haaskoning smeared the ink absently, then he put down the pen and joined his fingers together. "I am no longer so surprised at your abilities. I cannot tell you much about the powers you and I posses, not unless you join my order, but as you guess, a skill to think beyond the material dimensions is part of the key. Your education helped you do that, and it would help you harness your abilities much more if you build upon this with the right knowledge and lore. Right now your grip on the power is instinctive, not calculated. It will not respond to you well, or necessarily do what you ask it to. With the right education, the Outlands would be open before you."

Oh boy, thought Ryou, they really do want me now. But it seemed Haaskoning was currently willing to talk, if only to give Ryou a benevolent view of his order. Might as well take advantage of it. "What exactly are the Outlands?"

"That is yet another Mystery."

"...Well, is it really a series of, um, planes immersed in a higher space?"

A brief conflict crossed Haaskoning's expression, as if the leader of the Sons of Zaratusra wanted to yap on about Mysteries while the onetime architect from the Inlands wanted to discuss maths and physics with someone who would at least know what he was talking about and not drop magic into the mix. "This is not a knowledge that can bring you harm, so I guess I can tell you how it is, if not why. The Outlands are in fact a spiral, ah, a spiral fraction of our initial plane."

"...I am sorry, I don't know what you mean."

Haaskoning started gesticulating with his hands, almost knocking over the inkpot. His English was more elaborate now, as if this was a subject he was more used to discussing in that language. "It is as if our plane - that is to say our world, earth - creates an echo of itself but in a parallel dimension. Except this object is not parallel to its originator. It is bent into an X-dimensional spiral with the Inlands as its point of departure. The spiral fluctuates according to-...I cannot reveal that, but it loosens and tightens all the time. It also drifts very slowly outwards. This is why geography does not match up anymore to the Inlands. I did not know where you were from, so I was not able to do the maths - I will do them as soon as I get back to Asha Mainyu, let me tell you - but if these attackers shot Lord Ghan back straight through the layers of the spiral -"

"The Paths," Ryou interrupted in a blinding moment of understand. "They cut through the layers of the spiral. That's why I cannot take a Path and just go anywhere at any time. Mooncrest will only lead to the countries juxtaposed to it in the spiral, and depending on the shifting, these territories can or cannot be reached- but can all this be charted? Yes, of course they are, because the Passers know when a Path will be available."

"That is correct," said Haaskoning, beaming at Ryou like a proud teacher approving of his star pupil's epiphany. 

"That means the shifting is not random- oh, you can't tell me."

"Unfortunately not," said Haaskoning, shrugging into the awkward moment dampening their exchange. "Well, coming back to Lord Ghan, you can see that if they did just push him straight through to the border to the Inlands, and if the planes were parallel and unchanging, he would arrive in the No Man's Land somewhere in, oh, somewhere in Ethiopia. Certainly not in Asia."

"My god, he could have landed anywhere. He could have ended up in the ocean." Ryou glanced automatically to the right where Darius was still watching them. 

"Yes, though-...ah, there are other parameters that I cannot discuss."

Ryou swallowed a sigh of frustration, while his civility prodded him to say, "Thank you for telling me this much already."

Haaskoning waved that away and then leaned over his scroll, pen poised. "Coming back to your journey, why did you to take Lord Ghan back to the Outlands?"

A question Ryou did not want to answer to the full extent of the truth, but he could at least honestly say, "I'd seen the Rajin Bher. I knew something was wrong. Darius also said his enemies could track him down. He was unable to communicate with anyone else, he was obviously not from Tokyo...it just seemed better all around to take him back where he belonged."

"All around, I am sure," said Haaskoning with a bemused shake of his head. "I love the way you do not realize how hard that decision was. It is like I would say, I will leap over Sura because I want to get to the other side. And then?"

"We were attacked by border crossers. I couldn't leave Darius at their hands, so I...well, I didn't know what I was getting into at all, I was amazingly lucky, but I just, ah, drove the car through the spiral to another place. The Broken Lands."

Haaskoning shook his head again, still bowed over the parchment he was scribbling on, and muttered something in a language Ryou did not understand, possibly the man's native Dutch. 

"The effort drained me, I couldn't do anything else. So Darius led us out." Ryou glanced over at his lover again. Darius was frowning still, looking puzzled at the repeated mention of his name in this flow of foreign language. Ryou knew he should probably be referring to him as Lord Ghan, but for some reason the words just never took shape on his tongue. Darius was certainly the Lord Ghan that Rome feared, despite all the exaggerations his reputation had garnered, but for Ryou, Darius was Darius, and the Lord Ghan bit was just a part of him, and not the most important one. If Darius ever told him to, Ryou would correct himself when in public and use the title and the dog's name and all that, but until Darius said anything, Ryou would continue as now. Haaskoning seemed to know who he was talking about, and had not asked any questions.

Darius upheld Ryou's gaze with an expression that clearly said, "What? Do you need me to come over and help?" Ryou smiled, a reassurance and a little more than that as he remembered those first days of surviving together...Then Haaskoning dipped his pen and tinked it against the glass, and Ryou quickly called his emotions to order, pushing up his glasses and letting his fingers settle on his mouth in an automatic verification that none of his feelings had leaked out onto his face and embarrassed him. 

Haaskoning hurried Ryou through the next bit of the tale with only a few obligatory noises of sympathy at the treatment Ryou received at the hands of the deserters. The magian was visibly not interested in the mundane details of the journey. Ryou skipped ahead to the part where they'd taken the Path from Tot to Palis, which was the one bit that had him the most worried, as well as the question that had morally forced him to accept this meeting, even if Leyam hadn't made it an order. 

The pen had not written down a single line of the travel through the Broken Lands and Tot, but now it was scratching away again. "The Passer of that area? Sorry, I cannot comment."

God damn it. "You do know, though, right?" Ryou's fingers were leaving fingernail marks in his palm. 

Haaskoning shrugged, a gesture that could mean anything. "As I said, I cannot comment."

"But...I'm worried. I feel as if it was my fault."

"The creature you describe might have been there in response to your presence," said Haaskoning calmly, "but not through your fault. You did not know. Do not think I am unconcerned by what happened," he added. "We take care of our own: the magians who create, maintain and police the Paths, and also the Passers who guide travelers on them. If you join our order, protecting women like her would be...how can I say. It would be good work for you."

Bastard, thought Ryou, reigning in the flare of anger. He knew intellectually what Haaskoning was doing. This 'order' business made it sound needlessly religious; what Haaskoning really was was the CEO of the company of magian who insured trade and traffic through the Outlands, and he was not about to relay internal information or a hint of a weakness to a man who was as yet an outsider and who he was trying to recruit. Ryou tried to think of it that way, and only partially succeeded. 

"What happened next?"

"...We traveled through Palis, and then we took the Path to Essin. No, sorry, to Anwat, the neighboring province. This time the passage went smoothly. I concentrated hard on not interfering with anything." 

Haaskoning only nodded. 

"Then...then I was at the siege of Essin. Um." 

In his head, Ryou had not gotten past the question about the Passer who'd disappeared in Palis. He'd not thought how he was going to present the next bit without going into embarrassing details. 

"I...ah...because of the attack, I was sent up to the Essin border. Actually we were going to go to Aksum, and get out of the whole region entirely. But I...I decided when we got there that I did not want to leave, and that I'd rather stay with Darius. So I used the Essin circle to..."

"Yes, I know that bit," said Haaskoning, shaking the pen above the mouth of the inkpot.

"You do?"

Haaskoning tinked the nib against the glass and looked up at Ryou. "We have been following in your footsteps, a little. We did not know where you started from, but your exploits at Essin were the talk of the country. When we looked at the border there, it was clear what had happened. Using a sanctuary circle like that leaves a lot of tracks."

"I see." Once more Ryou noted that Haaskoning did not give a fig for Ryou's motivations, just the bits about his power. 

"It was also very dangerous, what you did."

"I know, I probably should have not done it, but...well, there were reasons. I guess I might have ended up back in the Broken Lands."

"No, that is not the baddest thing that might have happened. That almost did happen." Haaskoning had drawn a cloth from his tabard and was wiping the pen with it, but he was watching Ryou and his eyes were deep and old. "Did you have a very scary dream that night? Yes, I can see from your face that you did."

Ryou licked his lips and looked down at the hands he'd clasped on the marble tabletop as he remembered alien spines scratch-scratch-scratching at the walls of reality... 

Haaskoning unscrewed the pen's nib, wrapped it in the cloth and slipped it back into the pocket, along with the handle. His eyes did not leave Ryou's. 

"I do not tell you what thing you came close to that night. I am not allowed to talk of such things outside the order. But I think you know enough to be afraid of it. That is good. I hope you are very, very afraid, my friend. Of that thing, you cannot have too much fear."

"I...I tried hard not to think about it. Um, that sounds stupid."

"It is," said Haaskoning with a frosty smile. "Not thinking about it would not help. However, what your mind did was echo that feeling in a way you do not understand yet and it...hid you, so to speak. Made you harder to find. You have a big natural gift, Ryou. But it is also putting you into a great danger. I cannot tell you how much, not only because of the law of the Lore, but because my words are not enough to describe it."

The sun was shining straight through the arches as it brushed the top of the mountains surrounding Sura, but to Ryou, the room felt dark and cold anyway. 

Haaskoning dusted off the scroll with sand from a drawer at the bottom of his inkholder. "Well, if you do not use your powers, however, you should be safe. That is, as safe as you can be in an old country like Assyria who is at war with one of the great powers of our times."

Ryou looked at him in surprise. He'd already figured out that there was danger in spatial manipulation, he'd not needed Haaskoning to underline that. He'd expected the dire warning to be a lead-on to more threats and an effort to pressure him to join the Per Gathas for his own protection. Instead, Haaskoning was reassuring him that Ryou did not need the Per Gathas to stay safe as long as he did not touch his power.

If he was surprised by the sidestep away from threats, the next part astounded him. 

"It goes without saying that you are welcome to come see me in Asha Mainyu at any time you want. We can talk more. I do mean just visit, we will not, what, chain you and starve you into taking the robe and flame. That is not a good way to get a willing magian, and a pissed-off magian is a dangerous man who can jump in a number of directions, some of which do not even exist except first in his head." Haaskoning grinned, waiting for Ryou to appreciate the dab of humor. "So, a free invitation is always here for you. I will also have a package sent to you through the Passer at Mooncrest. Books you will like to read. They are in English. We have another secret language for our more greater texts, but so of course, those are not allowed out of our order. However, these English books should be good reading for you, and it is safe, you are the only man in Assyria who can read them, ya? You can read English, ya?"

Ryou nodded, then he hastened to thank Haaskoning. He still could not believe this apparent open-handedness.

"I cannot urge you strongly enough to not use your powers. If you do not believe me, ask Lord Ghan for tales of magian who disobey the natural order. If you will prefer to talk to a magian, or me, here, please take this."

Haaskoning drew a pendant from around his neck from where it'd been concealed beneath his tabard. It was a circle of gold with a stylized flame etched into it, surrounded by short wings. Its owner handed it over to a bemused Ryou, dropping it into his hand by the chain. "Please, take it, I have another. This is a symbol of our own religion of Zoroaster, but Outlanders who travel the Paths like to wear one like it for protection, so it does not, how would you say, obligate you of anything. This one has my mark on the back. It will get you free usage of the Paths. Please continue to take the same precautions as you did from Palis to Anwat. One book I send you will help. Also, if you do want to come to Asha Mainyu for whatever reason, show this to the Passer to get him to tell you the most direct route and start you on your way. You will be welcome."

"Thank you." Ryou looked at the symbol, heavy in his palm. Gold, almost certainly. 

"May it protect you on the Path. Any Path," said Haaskoning softly. "Not all of them are made by the Blessed Path Maker's design. Please do read the books I send you. They will help."

"Yes," said Ryou, who did not need the urging. In fact he wondered why Haaskoning was underlining this when he'd told Ryou in much the same breath to not use his powers at all. He had the oddest feeling the man was trying to tell him something else without actually spelling it out...

Haaskoning stood up to take his leave as if nothing odd had been said, leaving Ryou to wonder if the language or cultural gap wasn't at work here. Ryou got to his feet as well. So did Darius, pushing away from the bench and advancing towards them with a scowl on his face.

"Oh yes," Haaskoning said, then he added three soft words in an unknown tongue while touching his chest and forehead again.

This time Ryou was ready for it. He threw his senses wide like a net to catch what was being done. Unfortunately it was considerably more subtle than barreling through dimensions. Ryou had feelings and impressions brush his perception, but he didn't think he'd be able to reproduce it or, more importantly, counter it if it was used again...But even with his barely-there understanding, Ryou still couldn't begin to see how gestures and words could impact what was being done. All this was the power of the mind, not hands or vocal cords. Maybe it helped Haaskoning focus his thoughts on what needed to be done? Or maybe it was a way a way of reinforcing the supernatural , quasi mythical nature of this 'magic' with the locals. 

"There, you may communicate once more," said Haaskoning, now speaking fluent and elegant Japanese to Ryou's ears, a contrast to the sometimes halting English before that'd made him seem warmer and more genuine. "My pardons, Lord Ghan, as I said-"

"Yes," said Darius curtly, visibly reining in a powerful temptation to tell Haaskoning to get out of their sight _now_ , screw diplomacy.

"Thank you," said Ryou, mainly to let Darius know the effect was over for him as well.

Haaskoning obviously picked up the subtext. He bowed without any show of being offended by the attitude, then he left, collecting Emiokarnage with one quick look.

The door closed. Two held breaths were released. 

Who knew who moved first, maybe both, but Ryou found he'd reached out and another hand had seized his, gripping so hard it made his bones ache, gripping hard enough to pull them physically past the gap they'd glimpsed between them. Ryou squeezed back just as hard. Darius leaned back to sit against the edge of the table, eyes still fixed on the closed door. Without a word, Ryou imitated him. 

"Are you okay?" Darius asked gruffly.

"Yes, I can understand you now."

"Not what I meant. With that smiling git on one side of the table and you showing him that golden mask of yours on the other, I couldn't tell if he was promising you a mountain of silver or threatening to murder your mother."

"Neither, as it were. He just talked."

"And talked and talked, I noticed. Are you sure he wasn't trying to cast some enchantment on you through all his long words?"

"I don't think he can do that."

Darius turned his head to look at Ryou's profile. "Oh really? 'cause I noticed he could do something else we didn't expect him to."

"I know, but cancelling the Gift of Zaratusra is one thing. Taking over my own thought processes- it's not the same thing. It's different, it's-...not the same thing. Trust me."

Darius grumbled something about Haaskoning's sexuality and bloodline, his hand still gripping Ryou's. 

"He didn't threaten me at all when we talked," said Ryou, mentally adding 'more than he already had'. "In fact he gave me a good amount of information and extended a strings free invitation to the Per Gathas stronghold."

"Right. The snake extends that invitation to the mouse every night." 

"I think he actually meant it. But I'm in no hurry to put that to the test. As for the rest...he says he doesn't know who attacked you or why. But from what I gathered, there's really very few people who could do what was done to you. I suppose it's no wonder he didn't tell me anything."

"You think he knows?"

"I imagine he's got a very good idea. There's no way a power like that would be unknown to him. But he won't say anything that could betray a weakness, or worse. One thing he said, about the way their leaders are chosen, suggested a reason why there could be tensions within certain factions of the Per Gathas. If someone from his own order was acting against him, he'd not be in any hurry to admit it."

"Those were not Per Gathas stooges who attacked me," said Darius with conviction.

Ryou looked at him searchingly. "You sound very sure. Is it because they were wearing their own crest? I thought so too at first, but now I wonder if that's such a strong argument after all. They could be trying to bring pressure on their own order by discrediting them...What were you thinking?"

Darius smiled grimly. "I've seen any number of people attack others. I've seen those who do it proudly under their own banners, and those who don the color of treachery and deceit. I faced those cowards with their fucking magic, I know which kind they were."

Instinct, then. Ryou found he could reason one way or the other just as well and with as many clever arguments. Now he knew why Leyam was occasionally tempted to cut through conundrums by trusting Darius's gut feelings.

"What else did he tell you?"

"A lot of strange things. I'm going to have to think long and hard about it...Unfortunately what he told me was under a certain implicit oath of silence-"

"Implicit?" Darius echoed nastily. "That bastard born of his own sister fucked with our ears to keep his secrets safe, what's so implicit about that?"

"I agree that was a bit heavy-handed of him, but nonetheless, you understand, I can't go into too many details about what he said."

Darius gave him a strange look. "Of course you can't," he said as if confounded that Ryou could even think anyone could ask him to betray a confidence. That was Darius, Ryou thought, covering the strong, callused hand he held with his own; if only his brother would have the same restraint. It was almost certain Leyam would not. He'd spend the next few days trying to worm out of Ryou as many of the details as he could. Ryou rather expected it, and if he wasn't a complete idiot, Haaskoning would have as well.


	2. Chapter 2

A week after Haaskoning's visit, Ryou received the books the magian had promised him. Two were mathematical treatise dating back forty years; though they were on a branch of mathematics that was only cousin to the one Ryou was familiar with, he could still tell they were out of date. They did allow him to brush up on his maths and abstract geometry, and visit some concepts he'd not studied in university. In view of the dry, scientific subject matter, the scribbled commentaries in the margins from previous Inlander magians were often as fascinating as they were surreal. 

The third book was the most interesting, but also the most challenging. 'Of Defensive Useages of The Mysteries', as its title page proclaimed, was hand written by a previous magian, probably a hundred years ago guessing from the style. Not only was it in a cursive hand, it had been recopied since then by someone who was obviously not versed in English and transcribing blind, occasionally inverting letters. For a non-native English speaker, it was quite a challenge, but as it happened Ryou had plenty of time to spend learning the defensive 'useages' of his power, and one day he might conceivably have the need to use them too.

The waters of the two rivers rose and fell, the flood season coming on them like a pause, a heartbeat of stillness bathing Assyria for a few weeks. During that time, Ryou spent his mornings in the Golden Hall, usually in the company of Yau-seen of Tulloa, the scribe that Leyam had mentioned. The young eunuch could read five languages fluently and write in four of them. He was not only willing to read out anything Ryou might wish him too, he was also willing to give Ryou a hand in learning to read and write Latin. Ryou spent an hour doing that, while the rest of the morning was spent learning elements of the local economy and politics with Tupila. Leyam's chancellor was a soft man with soft-spoken manners and a soft smile. He was also one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. He seemed polite and easy to get along with at first, but beneath that appearance he was hidebound, stubborn, set in his ways and unwilling to question them. Most of Ryou's questions on the fundamentals of Assyrian economy eventually wound up with the answer 'because that is the way our forefathers have always done it'. Winning Tupila's trust enough to let him contemplate some of the simpler modernisations Ryou could think of was going to be a long and arduous task...Ryou wondered how this man got along with Leyam, before it occurred to him that Leyam might need someone like Tupila to softly yet surely put the brakes on some of the king's crazier notions. 

After butting heads with both Latin and Tupila all the morning, Ryou spent his afternoons reading 'Useages', or the math books for those days he grew tired of the effort required. Once he actually tackled it, 'Useages' was readable, but it also supposed he possessed a few fundamental concepts on the peculiar physics of the Outlands that he did not have, and that he would supposedly have to go to Asha Mainyu to learn. Ryou would finish the afternoon with a pile of scribbled notes dotted all over with question marks, the beginning of a headache and a growing conviction this was just some trick of Haaskoning to induce him to join the Per Gathas. 

At least 'Useages' did not try to wrap its contents up in a cloak of magic. The Inlander who'd written it was very much into paranormal phenomenon, so the language and the theories were not always much better than magic to the rational mind, but at least Ryou was not being asked to use cleansing incense or sing out sutras. This was a power of the mind, a power linked to extra-dimensional nature of the planes. This ability would be virtually useless Inlands, where physics knew its place and stuck to it (though the author of 'Useages' speculated wildly at some point about séances). But here in the Outlands, it was another matter. The substance of Zaratusra's spiral was more tenuous than the world Ryou had known all his life. The body might believe it existed within three ordinary dimensions, but the human mind had the ability to create a ripple somewhere else, a superior space. The physics behind this phenomenon was not clear; the margins of the math books suggested this extra space was easily influenced by the ability to think about it, in a way that had superficial similarities to the effect of observation in quantum physics - but no more than that, superficial. If anyone had done research, it was not in these books. Most people were dumb and blind to this extra space that existed a mere thought away from them, but magian had the ability to affect it, mould it and travel through it. Not without risk, though. The Veil, the supernumary dimension encasing the planes of the Outlands, held dangers for those whose minds caused a bigger ripple than the ordinary human. 

The last chapter was entirely devoted to 'Paramnormal Biengs' (from the increased number of errors, Ryou supposed the scribe had been getting tired of his transcribing by then). The author once more went off on a lamentable tangent about fairies and other apparitions Inlands instead of dwelling on the very real dangers in the Outlands. It wasn't clear from his writing what these things were; at best, creatures who simply possessed magian-type abilities that extended their predation territories across dimensions instead of square kilometers. At worst...well, if such an insanity as the Veil was possible, who could say that this extra dimension did not have its own inhabitants and predators? How helpless would people be, locked in their little dimensional box and faced with those creatures; like inchworms crawling along the ground unaware how visible they were to a bird's eye view...

That was the chapter Ryou read again and again. Essentially it boiled down to what Haaskoning had told him. Don't use your powers carelessly, don't send up flares in the higher dimensions, and then these creatures won't be able to find you amongst the fog of matter and minds that our wispy dimension must be to them. Ryou disregarded the protective cantrips the book suggested; another Inlander had written 'what a load of bollocks' in the margin which the English-illiterate scribe had faithfully transcribed to Ryou's copy. The mental exercises to hide one's presence and tracks looked more promising, but Ryou would not know how much he'd mastered them until he actually put it into practice in a real situation. And that's what really struck him as odd. Why had Haaskoning given him this information when he was not supposed to use magic and thus not need it?

"Ryou? You going to sleep over there?"

Ryou looked up at Darius, standing before him in the half-light with saddlebags slung over his shoulder. "No, just thinking." Though maybe 'daydreaming' would be more accurate. It'd been a whole month and a week since his arrival in Sura - 73 days in the Outlands, which made it the 23rd of March back home - and in all his time in the royal city Ryou had not had to get up before the crack of dawn. He'd somewhat lost the habit. 

Darius glanced around, checking that the Hounds filling the courtyard were not in earshot. "Last chance to change your mind," he said in a way that suggested he expected Ryou to do so right after the sun fell out of the sky like an overripe peach.

Ryou got to his feet. "Let's go."

"It's only for a twelveday, two at most. It will be wet, boring-"

"You gave me an adequate description last night. I'm not going for the fun of it, but I said I would come with you and I will. If nothing else, it will give me a break from constantly studying those books."

"And what would that be?" Darius asked, changing the position of the saddlebags to point at the papers Ryou had been staring at blindly earlier and was now folding away.

"Um, just some notes."

The mouth that'd been set in such a stern expression these past few days twitched briefly at the corners.

"We're going to walk a Path," Ryou said, trying not to sound defensive. "I know I negotiated two already without incident, but I want to be sure-"

"Come along, my bookish friend," said Darius, dumping one of the saddlebags on Ryou's shoulder and leading the way towards their mounts.

Dela the Kush had been promoted in place of the officer who'd fallen at Essin, so Dionosydoros was still leading the personal guard of fourteen men currently getting onto their horses. He gave the mounted soldiers a severe look as he assessed them by the light of the torches they carried, then he gave Ryou a much friendlier nod before turning towards Darius. "Ready, sir."

"Let's ride, boys."

The riders fell out two by two, with just a slight pause in order to let Ryou nudge his horse into the slot left for him behind Dio and Darius and next to Jexen. 

They were riding to rejoin the main forces of the Assyrian army, who were going to rendezvous at some point in the next few days with another Alliance group. The men had been marching for a whole two months already. An oddity of Outland military tactics was that the commanders could travel via available Paths as long as their escort numbered less than twenty armed men, but the troops themselves had to march. This meant that a brilliant general like Terentius could command two different campaigns, as long as the men had been led to where they were supposed to fight ahead of time. When a large force moved out over a period of months like this, commanding officers relayed each other to direct the maneuver. Those rank-and-file soldiers who'd showed particular bravery in battle could have leave time at home as a reward, while the seriously injured could be sent back for medical care at Sura's temples - but not the sick, since Darius and every commander in the Outlands knew that there were no surer bringers of plague and disaster than an army marching from point A to point B. 

The Paths of Zaratusra had given rise to units like Ghan's Hounds; rapid intervention forces that could split into independent units of sixteen men and scatter to take different Paths or land routes and rendezvous thousands of miles away. A large force composed of men who couldn't read a map could not move about like that, but the Hounds were a small strike force that could appear out of nowhere, cut enemy lines and be gone again to harass them in another place entirely a week later. Darius wasn't often called to interact with the main infantry forces, except when someone of his authority was called upon to oversee a particularly fraught maneuver. Ryou had been surprised to learn that meeting up with another armed group of men to march off together was in fact considered such. He didn’t see what was particularly difficult about that, and he'd said so when they'd discussed it last night. 

"You ask that question because you've never seen an army on the move," had been his lover's reply. Darius had been getting ready for the early morning trip in his room where Ryou had joined him. They spent most evenings together enjoying the activities of any free man of certain means in Sura; talking, playing games, visiting friends, conversing with Leyam if the King was in the mood, or just spending time together, a time that regularly ended up in bed. 

"You said twenty thousand men once the two groups join up, right? It will be quite a sight."

Darius had picked up his sword without turning around. "Twenty thousand very dirty men hauling their humps across ugly terrain with Namtar and his hungry sisters snapping at their heels. It's nothing a sane man would want to see."

"I get the distinct impression you do not want me to go," Ryou had finally said after studying his lover's back for a minute.

”It's your choice," was the indifferent answer. "Just be aware of what to expect. It's going to be cold, nasty, and once I get there I'm going to hang a dozen men."

That'd caught Ryou short. "Why, what did they do?"

Darius had tossed an unpleasant smile over his shoulder. "No idea yet, but as sure as crows follow soldiers, there'll be some disciplinary action waiting for me to sanction, be it for insubordination, stealing, blasphemy or a knife fight over some cunt."

The way he'd said that, callous and in-your-face...It'd occurred to Ryou that maybe his lover wanted him to stay in Sura rather than come along and rub shoulders with Ghan the Beast for a fortnight. That'd been the man talking so casually about capital punishment while checking the edge of his sword and the binding of the hilt. It was a situation Ryou had not had to face for awhile. But that was because he'd been letting his life here in Sura pull the wool over his eyes. He was with Darius now, and that man was also a hardened warrior feared far and wide as Ghan the Beast. If Ryou stayed behind in safety and only climbed into bed with Darius, he'd be doing neither of them a favor in the long run, though his expectations of what lay ahead on their journey had been busy dipping to a new low...

"If that's what you judge you have to do, then that's what you have to do. It's your army, your rules, your decision," Ryou had pointed out, getting to his feet. "My decision is to come with you. I am not going to live in comfort here while you're away and possibly in danger."

"Not that much danger. Inder and Hygeia have so far protected us from a breakout of camp fever, despite going through the marches of Ayengosor, and this is friendly territory we're crossing."

"I thought you were going because there was going to be some fighting and problems."

"No, I'm going in order to make sure there _isn't_ any fighting and problems," Darius had corrected him with a grin that was all edges. "We've been trying to keep these troop movements towards Bar-Shaparya a secret, so both our troops and the Alliance ones are marching blind and without the usual staging preparations. So to meet up with those Alliance knot-heads, we'll first have to find them, because Ayengosor is large, does not have roads, rivers or other landmarks beyond those stinking marshes, and it's surprising how wrong some buggers can get their maps." Ryou, who'd seen maps in these regions, wasn't all that surprised himself. "We'll be sending out scouting parties to _find_ the other group, and living off the land as we are, we can't afford to take too much time about it, or see our scouts shot on sight because some drunken Olympian on the opposite side thought our rider looked like a Roman, or a haunt or a Fury or anybody but the goats his mom used to have him herd. Once we actually manage to connect our forces, we're going to have to create two camps, preferably on either side of a river to keep the infighting and the petty squabbles to a minimum. After that, we have to make sure the scouts as well as our riders who are rejoining us from other regions can find us, while keeping the men from killing each other through lack of action, and all this is going to be complicated enough without distractions."

All this, and it was actually going to be a couple more months before their forces were going to get into actual combat...Ryou had always thought of strategy as being something applied during battles, but of course logistics was what got an army where it was supposed to go and this was often what won the war. His countrymen had initially conquered their corner of the Pacific sixty years ago by being inventive and thorough in that way. 

"I won't get in your way. But I am coming with you. Those magian who attacked you before could try another stab at you in the confusion. Besides-..."

Darius had looked over his shoulder to see if Ryou was going to finish that sentence. Ryou had avoided his gaze, looking down at the arms he'd crossed over his chest. "Besides, I wasn't planning on staying here and sewing a tapestry of your deeds. I can barely thread a needle."

His pallid attempt at humor had fallen flat. "You have nothing to prove to me," was Darius's short reply. He'd sheathed his sword and tossed it on the low table in complete disregard of the soft, elegant wood it was carved in.

"That's not what I meant. I want to go with you, Darius, even it's going to be dangerous or boring and regardless of whether I can actually help or not. That's what's between us. If I had to go to Asha Mainyu for some dire and complicated magic-related reason you could not hope to help me with, I would like to think you'd go with me anyway, in the same spirit."

Darius had put his hand on his hips and stared down at his packed saddlebag as if honesty had been fighting his desire to say something that would keep Ryou in Sura. "If my duty to Leyam permitted, yes," he'd finally said, because neither Darius nor Ghan were at home with lying about things that mattered. 

"Well then." 

"Go to bed," Darius had said curtly without turning around. "We need to get up early tomorrow."

Ryou had dutifully gotten to his feet to go. The minor victory hadn't tasted sweet at all, but it'd been the taste of a bitter pill that had to be swallowed.

Just as he'd reached for the door, something else got shoved onto the poor table, there was the sound of striding footsteps behind him and then an arm caught him around the shoulder before his fingers could touch the fretted wood. 

" _This_ bed," Darius had said in his ear, and then, with a grudging half-smile of surrender Ryou could hear in his voice, "if it pleases you, shield brother."

Ryou had decided just as promptly that he did not want to leave it on that previous note either, and-...

...and what happened next would explain why he was currently nodding off on his horse and Jexen has already told him once, in a kindly way, to make sure he kept a good hold on with the stirrups.

 

 

The docks at Mooncrest were already hopping as Ryou and the Hounds crossed the bridge, past the far end which had only recently been dug out of the mud the receding floods had deposited there. The Mooncrest circle, and its attendant Passer sanctuary, were as large as an important country like Assyria required, and staffed with a dozen people. The sanctuary consisted of two large multi-stored buildings joined together by stables and a stone courtyard to shelter travelers and animals waiting for access to their Path. All was quiet as the party approached the circle of stelae. A boy carrying feed to some animals in the stable was the only person visible. The kid dropped his bale when he saw Darius's armor, and ran indoors. By the time their group dismounted, one of the Passers had trotted out of the inn and stood ready to greet them near one of the marker stones.

"Noble Lord," he said with a bow. Ryou, with his cultural appreciation of such gestures, recorded and admired the precise depth of the obeisance. It said that Darius was a great man whom the Passer would treat with all due respect...but not one who could command the guide of Paths as he would an Assyrian. To Ryou, that was just as expressive as the absence of any other formal words such as 'My hand beneath your foot'. 

"Greetings, Periklan" said Darius who didn't give a damn about etiquette anyway. "Can you lead us through?"

The Passer bowed again, a little deeper in appreciation at being remembered by name and addressed with no condescension. Then he led the party of men and horses across the thirty meters of open space to the inn.

"We're seeking passage for sixteen of us to Ayengosor," said Darius as they moved across the courtyard. "You may inspect our baggage if you wish."

This was a formula Darius had used once before in Ryou's earshot, when going from Essin to Tanatoria. He'd not used it back in Tot or Palis, when he and Ryou were posing as two ordinary travelers. It was quite understood back then that if the Passer wanted to question them or check them for contraband, he or she was perfectly at right to do so, and refuse them access to the Path if the result was not pleasing, or indeed without any explanation or reason given at all and no chance for appeal. Lord Ghan was subject to this universal law same as everybody else, however the higher up the individual, the more fraught this became for the Passer. So it was custom and a politeness from nobility to the Per Gathas to go ahead and offer without forcing the Passer to say anything. The baggage was piled onto three spare horses with no real identifying marks, so the Passer could poke through a few without worrying whose it was. Of course Darius might have the technical blueprints for a cannon hidden about his person, and Ryou doubted the Passer conducted strip searches...It made Ryou wonder once again why Assyria and its neighbors were stuck so far back in the past. Assyria, Aksum, Ur, and the remnants of areas once held by the Babylonians and Sumerians, all these countries known collectively as the Pariya - the Original Lands - as well as the Doric (Ionian and Greek), the Imperium, the Mauryian Empire, and presumably S'ung Chao...they could, if they wanted to, send people far off to learn from other cultures from the middle-ages Europe and the Yuan Dinasty all the way to Ezo and Sri Lanka refugees, learn everything from reinforced steel to antibiotics and properly built shells. It boggled Ryou's mind that they did not. 

Darius, followed by Ryou, entered the inn to further let the Passer do his inspection without their presence. Dio stayed to make sure nothing got broken, and to pay the man, sixteen tiny silver coins that were minted from an almost pure metal specifically for use on the Paths. There were only three other travelers in the Inn, a merchant and his two guards, eating an early morning breakfast of pan-fried gruel, cheese and weak beer. This then would be the owner of the covered bales across four patient mules outside loaded with goods. Ryou was ready to bet it would be the only caravan traveling with them. Mooncrest was a busy center of commerce ordinarily, but the country the Paths led to this morning had been taken by the Roman army one way, freed by the Alliance the other, and were now in a state where they would not be much interested in luxury goods imported from distant lands. They might appreciate staples, but would not be able to afford them when the price of imported food had to cover travel and the Passer's silver, making it so much more expensive than local grown produce.

Darius returned with a nod the bowed greeting from the merchant and his guardsmen who'd gotten to their feet when they saw who had joined them. Three other men, members of the staff at the inn, joined them to bow as well

"Did you want any refreshments, my Lord?" one of them asked humbly.

"No time, I imagine," Darius replied. "Ryou? Perhaps some beer?"

Beer in the morning was something Ryou could not get used to, not that he'd ever tried all that hard. He shook his head.

Darius was about to add something when the boy who'd been tending the stables earlier came back through the kitchen with some bread in a basket, followed by a short man who was belting on a pair of loose trousers, Persian-style. The newcomer had an unsmiling demeanor that seemed to mean business. He bowed to Darius and Ryou immediately.

"New man?" Darius asked, looking him up and down curiously. 

"Yes my Lord." He had an astoundingly deep voice for a man who didn't reach up to Ryou's shoulder. "My name is Andrap, I was born in Atta, in the town of Marzuk. I am here to help Passer Periklan and his nephews with their duties. It's a busy time of the year."

"Yeah, it's like that after every flood," said Darius, still looking the man over. Andrap didn't add anything, gaze lowered as befit their respective status. When the silence stretched, he bowed again, lower than before, and disappeared back into the kitchens.

Darius watched him go, then gestured Ryou to the door. "Come on, let's see when we can leave."

"The right Path is not open yet," Ryou said automatically.

Darius gave him a private eye-roll. "You should have read those 'notation' things of yours more carefully."

"I can tell if the rifts are aligned even without exercising any-"

"Huh-uh, just don't shoot us to Hades and back again."

"You know very well- you're trying to get a rise out of me, aren't you."

Darius didn't answer since they were back out in the courtyard full of Hounds and others, but there was a small smirk on his face that Ryou knew well. Ryou threw a few jibes back at his lover in the privacy of his own head, though truth be told, he had been getting a little wound up at walking a Path now that he knew a bit more what kind of dangers lurked there. The fact that Darius was relaxed enough about Ryou's abilities to tease him had loosened him up. 

They went back out into the courtyard where Periklan's daughter, a girl of ten, was distributing warmed wine to the Hounds. She quickly trotted over to Darius and Ryou when she saw them and managed to bob down onto one knee, head lowered, without spilling anything on the tray. Ryou's mother would have approved. Darius picked up two cups and handed one to Ryou, who went ahead and took it. He didn't really feel like drinking even watered down alcohol at this ungodly hour of the morning, but the way the warm liquid steamed in the early morning freshness tempted him. He took a sip. Not half bad, even though it was full of sediment and spices and stuff. Damn, but he wished these lands knew about tea and coffee.

Darius lifted his own cup- he did not drink and his narrowed eyes twitched sideways. Ryou, surprised, followed the sharp gaze to see the new Passer, Andrap, disappear into the small barn where Periklan's cow, goats and hens were kept. The man had a pail in his hands and a good reason for being there, and Ryou told himself it was paranoid to feel that Andrap had been looking at him a moment before. Ryou had been jumpy for weeks now with the feeling he was being watched whenever he left the inner palace, which was probably due to the way he'd barged into Sura's heaving hotbed of politics at Darius's side. Now that he was away from the capital, he'd be quite happy to put the itch between his shoulderblades down to his imagination, but something about the look in Darius's eyes told him otherwise.

"What?" he whispered.

Darius tore his gaze away from the dark entrance to the stable and took a pull of his wine. "Nothing, perhaps. It's just that Periklan's never needed help before that I know of. When the Per Gathas send someone out here, it's some boy fresh out of Asha Mainyu for the first time to learn his trade, and that one over there is no boy...But the ways of the Per Gathas are mysterious, it probably means nothing. Stick close to me when we're crossing," he said in conclusion as he walked away, rather ruining whatever reassurance Ryou might have gathered from his words. 

Ryou gave the barn a last look and then took a moody pull at his drink. It wasn't as if he'd needed another reason to worry about walking a Path today...But it was true, as soon as he'd crossed the border of stelae, he was no longer in Assyria proper, he was in the domain of the Per Gathas. Ryou still didn't know what to think about them. If Andrap really had been looking at him, that could just mean that Haaskoning had given him and Periklan a description of Ryou and a warning to watch him, particularly while he traveled. That'd make sense; there was no reason to think this reaction particularly ominous. Right. Ryou glanced around to check that Darius was busy with the men, and then, feeling like an idiot, he drew out the second page of notes he'd made, the one that was not about paranormal monsters from higher dimensions but a threat much closer to home that he'd already tasted once. The notes he'd made were in Japanese, abbreviations he used in his business notations for added discretion. 

Ever since Haaskoning had stripped him of the Gift of Zaratusra, Ryou had been understandably nervous about a repeat performance that would leave him cast away in a country where nobody could understand him. His pet project had been to understand the Gift, and how to stop it from being removed again. First, Ryou had scoured 'Useages' for anything that might be relevant, but this time the book came up empty. Since it seemed he had to rely on his own abilities, Ryou had then tried to meditate on the matter; it seemed to be the sort of thing one would do in those circumstances. The only guide to meditation he had was from a blurb he’d read at the back of a pamphlet on getting the stressed-out business man to relax; he’d found in a Hilton during a trip to Hong Kong. That didn’t fly. Finally Ryou had sat down and tried what he knew best. In the absence of a laptop, that meant a piece of charcoal pencil and a sheet of vellum to reason it out mathematically, and then using that basis to analyze this element his own head with the help of the knowledge gained from the three tomes Haaskoning had sent. And right there, in his own mind, was where he’d found the Gift. 

To break out of Tokyo and into the Outlands, Ryou had touched and pierced the surface of the regular three-dimensional world, what magians called The Veil. When he'd done so, something had clung to him like fresh paint on a wall sticking to his fingers. How this phenomenon had been generated was something Ryou could not begin to imagine; the subtlety, power and potency of it left him in considerable awe of the Per Gathas and their founder. Maybe Per Gathas magians had to constantly renew it so that it would be always ready to attach itself to a new mind that crossed the Veil for the first time...Ryou did not know how it was created or maintained, or how he could stop it from being removed. He just knew - sort of - how it worked. In the same way Ryou's extra senses stretched beyond the three dimensions but affected what his brain perceived, this little hitchhiker stuck to his presence in the higher dimension, reached down and filtered his perception of the world, specifically the visual and auditory combination that the human brain interpreted as words. The incoming signal was parasited with garbage accumulated by culture, accents, imagery etc. It was stripped and modulated into the fundamental kernel of meaning, a universal meta-language that Ryou's poor brain tried to delude itself was Japanese out of an interest in keeping its bearings. The outgoing signals were the same. Ryou had been speaking this meta-tongue ever since he'd known Darius; his audience heard meaning, not words, and automatically assigned their language to it. Logic dictated that Ryou had been speaking this meta-tongue ever since crossing over to the no man's land the first time, and it obscurely upset him in the tiny part of himself not dominated by logic to think his own brother had been hearing him talk in some mystical neo-language and hadn't even realized it. The fact that he was speaking it even now, the only one in Sura to do so, left him feeling oddly isolated...

"Ryou," Darius drawled in his ear, drawing out the vowels. 

"I'm fine," Ryou said automatically.

"You're very fine and sleeping on your feet." The warm hand that squeezed his shoulder pulled him out of his thoughts and towards the horses. "Come on, Periklan said we're about to get going." 

"Glad to hear it," said Ryou, pocketing his notes and his wayward thoughts to concentrate once more on the material, such as the horse he was going to get very well acquainted with over the coming fortnight of riding alongside a marching army. Couldn't get much more material than that.


	3. Chapter 3

Ryou's Seiko was still running strong despite all the horse riding and occasional accidents it’d seen, an excellent advertisement for its makers. Ryou dreaded the day it would run out of batteries. It was telling him it was now 6:27 in the morning, thirty minutes since they'd arrived at Mooncrest. It could not tell him what Ryou's inner sense was whispering now; that the Paths were shifting with the faint ripple of light washing across the land. It was the belief in these countries that the rising sun opened the Path. Ryou knew this was nonsense. The Paths opened and shut in accordance to rhythms that were influenced by the gravitational effects of the sun and moon and many other factors Ryou couldn't grasp, but they were pretty much accessible all the time (whether they led anywhere safe was another matter). The only reason Passers did not usually pass people before sunrise was because it would be easy to stumble over unseen obstacles in the indeterminate light before dawn, and while following a rift snaking through several dimensions, it was considered a Bad Idea to go tripping and falling headfirst. Ryou also suspected that this notion of precise times of departures protected Passers from the hassle of impatient merchants and haughty nobles insisting they leave _right now_.

Ryou felt the rifts align, though he did not have the power or the knowledge to say where they were going at this point. Presumably to Thezali, since that was where they were headed. Darius had sent one of his Hounds over days ago to ask Periklan, the head Passer, when the Path to their destination would be accessible. Now that the spiral was aligned, the Path would be open for one and a half days. Their group had plenty of time to cross the planes and get to where they were going, but Darius had wanted to go as soon as possible, so they were here at the crack of dawn and for the minute this route became accessible.

"Blessed is the Path Maker, we follow in his footsteps," pronounced Periklan solemnly up ahead, a ritual many Passers skipped if they didn't have half-blood royalty traveling with them. Then the old Passer moved away from the inn, the caravan of twenty people and thirty animals falling into a single column behind him. 

Ryou was third in line after Dionysodoros and Jexen. Three paces away from the tavern, he felt it: that flux in the air that marked the border between planes, the rifts forming an invisible labyrinth through this odd fraction of space that was both _here_ and _elsewhere_ equally. Each sharp turn, marked by the thump of Periklan's staff, twisted them further away from Assyria through a space that could not be fully grasped by the mind. Everybody else was oblivious to this, which was probably for the best. As for Ryou, he kept his eyes fixed on Jexen's back and his mind on a tight leash, forbidding it to reach out and feel the intriguing swirls and eddies that surrounded their zigzagging progress across the terrain charged with abnormal physics, all the way to the bridge across the water, the fulcrum of the change that would bring them to Thezali. 

Darius had somehow contrived to walk his horse behind Ryou's without being obvious about it, but when Ryou glanced back Darius was also looking around, making sure that all the men were neatly lined up and following across the bridge. Apparently he wasn't worried about Ryou bringing the Furies or dog-headed critters down onto their heads. Neither was Ryou, too much. Though 'Useages' had completely skipped over the basics of how Paths worked, the book had not skimped on how magians should safely navigate them, and Ryou had made a beeline to that chapter weeks ago. It wasn't that complicated, just a matter of focusing on the Path straight ahead and not letting the mind wander dangerously. It was what Ryou had been doing instinctively his last two trips through a border.

The caravan crossed the bridge single file behind Periklan. Ryou couldn't figure out why water seemed to be so important as the crucial demarcation between the planes being crossed. He reasoned that it might be for the benefit of the Passers, who were not magians with the power and understanding to change these currents, and who could merely sense them and navigate them. Running water was a powerful symbol in every culture Ryou had heard of so far, maybe the Per Gathas were using that as a visual and also a subconscious aid to the crossing. Yet Ryou could feel something subtle about this flow ahead of him, even though he knew damn well that there was nothing magical about water, running or otherwise, and it's mass and effects were nothing compared to the forces at work here. Damn it, if only Haaskoning hadn't given him dribs and drabs and nothing else...Ryou moodily felt at the pendant around his neck, hidden beneath his tunic. He'd taken it with him out of a vague worry the Passer would refuse him passage, but when Periklan had visibly not recognized him from any other person perched on a horse, he’d not bothered flashing the jewel around to get free passage. Living in the palace virtually free of charge, he’d still not touched much of the recompense money the king had given him. He could afford a bit of desirable discretion.

Ryou's reflections were interrupted by the butt of Jexen's horse which was suddenly only two steps away. He quickly put his hand on his own mount’s nose and tugged the reins. Once the animal stopped, Ryou craned his neck to see what the hold-up was. Periklan was a few paces ahead of the group, standing with his walking stick planted on the ground, and looking around as if he couldn't remember which way to go. He didn’t look concerned, and neither did Dio up ahead. Maybe this was an occasional occurrence. Maybe the Path wasn’t quite lined up right yet, and they had to wait here a minute. Maybe the Passer, quite well along in years by Outland standards, was halfway senile and was going to get them all lost between dimensions, and that was what Andrap had been hinting at earlier. Ryou curbed in his anxiety and pessimism. If that had been Andrap’s concern and the reason he was here, ‘assisting’, then he’d have made sure to come with the group, but instead he’d stayed back at the inn.

Up ahead, Periklan turned to speak to Dio. Ryou caught the words "Sorry for the wait," over a soft snort in his ear from his horse. 

Whirr- _THUD!_

Ryou looked around wildly, trying to see around Jexen's horse. But there was now only a startled Dio up ahead.

Horses whinnied in alarm. Jexen shouted. Ryou heard steel leave scabbards. 

Ryou took a step back- then another, hastily. Jexen's horse was putting up a fuss, backing away and trying to rear. Dio's horse was also kicking up a storm. Ryou's mount, a steady creature his friends had expressly chosen for him, was snorting and doing ear semaphores to broadcast his intention of getting excited any minute now. 

Past the flailing hooves and Dio hauling down on his reins, Ryou spotted Periklan. The man was on the ground in a heap a meter from where he'd been previously standing. 

Sword unsheathed, Darius brushed past Ryou with the determined, unhurried stride of an officer taking control of a situation. Ryou dropped his horse's reins and followed. 

Periklan did not stir, even though the nearby horses were stamping the ground fit to shake it and Dio was shouting at him to get up. Some distance away from the fallen man was presumably the object that had felled him, at the end of a rut that suggested it had thudded and rolled to a stop. It was solid and polished black. Stone, Ryou thought, then amended that with ‘statue’; a stone statue of a king crane with its feet pulled up beneath it so that it was lying on its chest. It was twenty centimeters across the wingspan, a good likeness. Small, but it must weigh a kilo or more. Who the hell was pelting them with _statues_?!

Then the thing moved. 

Ryou - even Darius - took an instinctive step back when the polished black neck extended itself. It shifted its weight forward with a lurch. Now its legs were beneath it, folded too sharply at the knee-joint to be bird-like. Its wings had come forward to touch the ground at the bend, just like the wings of a bat. But the way it scurried forward...it moved like a beetle. A shiny black beetle the size of a rat. It was moving towards Periklan- but Darius took one step forward so that it'd have to turn its side towards him to get to the Passer, and that made it stop as if suddenly turned back to stone. 

"What the fuck is that?" asked Darius rhetorically. "Periklan? Dio, check on Periklan."

Dio moved slowly and cautiously, eyes fixed on the creature. Ryou moved more quickly, ignoring Darius's hiss of warning. He scooped up the Passer's walking stick where it'd been dropped and held it between himself and the creature as he knelt near the fallen man. He didn't have any other weapon, and he'd be perfectly useless standing around like a wallflower while Dio did the legwork. 

Periklan was breathing, though Ryou had to put his ear right next to the passer's mouth to feel the faint exhale. Ryou hesitated to straighten the man out, but it wasn't as if they were going to get an ambulance, a gurney and a backboard out here if Periklan had been hit in the spine or neck...The Passer groaned, a bitten off sound, and his eyelids fluttered when Ryou turned him over as gently as he could, supporting his head all the way. Through the bulky brown tunic and cloak Periklan had donned against the morning freshness, Ryou could not tell where he'd been struck by the crane, assuming that's what had happened. 

The thing clacked its beak very quickly, a noise exactly like an insect rubbing its mandibles. Ryou repressed a shudder and looked away from the creature and back to its victim. 

"Darius, we need to get him to a doctor. I mean a priest."

"Is he awake?"

"No."

"Then I am open to your suggestion as to how we get out of here," said Darius. "Fuck this," he added, turning around. Three shorts strides took him to Jexen's horse. He slid one of two short javelins from its sling on the saddle, turned and hurled it at the crane-creature before Dio or Jexen could object or offer to take the risk of attacking it in his stead.

The creature tried to scurry back when Darius whipped the javelin at it, but it'd been too late. None of the Hounds present could have missed at that range. The javelin smacked into the crane- and somersaulted away with a ringing crash. The bloody thing _was_ made of stone! 

Though the javelin's point had done nothing more than scratch the shiny black material of its back, it'd hammered the crane's body into the dirt. Its wings jerked and thudded away at the soil, trying to move, uncoordinated, maybe broken.

Darius ignored it as he crouched at Ryou's side. He checked Periklan's head and then gave him a shake, ignoring Ryou's sharp advice to the contrary. "Ei, old man, wake up and get us out of here."

"Darius-" Ryou looked around, but there was going to be no source of help out here. The inn of Mooncrest had disappeared behind them as soon as they’d gotten near the bridge. There was a lot of shouting from the column of men who’d been following them, fear and concern as the nature of the holdup finally trickled all the way down the file. Horses nickered as they felt their humans start to panic, even the hardened Hounds. Ryou remembered the stories of disappearing travelers that were spreading these days. Maybe those groups had also been attacked by stone cranes targeting the Passer first. Once the Passer was out of commission, the travelers would never get back to anywhere normal and thus nobody would ever know what happened to them. 

A whirring noise made Ryou duck instinctively. Darius crouched low and spun on his heels. From the corner of his eye, Ryou glimpsed a black shape coming _right at him_ -

A second went by, a dozen thudding heartbeats...but nothing crashed into him. Ryou took his arms away from his head and straightened up cautiously. The black object that'd been hurtling towards him and Darius was nowhere to be seen; instead a man in a dark cloak, back towards them, stood between them and danger.

"Is everybody alright?" Andrap asked in a recognizable bass voice without moving his eyes away from the patch of earth and sky the cranes had come from. "Periklan?" 

"That thing over there dive-bombed us. I think it hit him," said Ryou, pointing at the first crane which was still jerking around in the dirt. 

"He said the Path was closed," added Dionysodoros, who'd left Jexen to watch the broken crane to cover Darius's back. "He stopped and told me that the Path was closed, and that maybe we were too early. Then he turned towards me and that's when that thing hit him. Took him near shoulder level I believe."

"It's blocked," Andrap said with a glance ahead. "We need to go back. Can someone carry him?"

Darius made a gesture, and Dionysodoros quickly sheathed his sword and picked up the fallen Passer in a fireman carry. Periklan groaned again. If he was half conscious, surely that wasn't too bad a sign...Ryou forced himself not to tell Dio to avoid jostling the poor old man. They were beyond that kind of consideration.

"Turn back," Andrap instructed, gesturing at the large group behind him. This unfortunately insured they were all looking at him when he suddenly spun around once more. Ryou felt it too, now that he was paying attention. The disruption was small and some distance away, not at all like the Rajin Bher or the dog-headed creature; it barely registered above the constant flux around him that filled his senses. But it was another crane creature, its wings whirring as fast as a beetle's, quite uselessly since there was no aerodynamics involved here. The thing moved in an elliptical arc like a rock out of a catapult. It was aiming right at Andrap.

Andrap gestured sharply.

The crane-bomb came right at them- yet it was getting smaller and smaller, as if it was falling _away_ , even though Ryou's sense of perspective told him it was still coming right at them. Then it was gone, vanished before it was more than two meters away from the Passer.

"Okay," said Andrap, wiping some sweat from his brow, his back still towards the column. "Please head back the way we came." 

He could have saved his breath. Everybody was shouting now that they'd caught a glimpse of the crane and figured out they were under attack. The Passer's deep voice went completely unheard. Andrap's attention was split between watching the flux around them and trying to get everyone's attention by talking over his shoulder when-

" _SILENCE!_ "

Everybody shut up, including the civilians and the horses. One of the mules at the far back of the column let loose a worried bray and then quickly lowered its head. 

"Go and lead them," Darius said in a normal voice as he turned towards Andrap. "They won't go anywhere otherwise."

Andrap looked over his shoulder as if he wanted to object- 

A flicker at the edge of Ryou's concentration. "Watch it!" he hissed, but Andrap was way ahead of him, hand lifting towards the incoming missile.

"Let it pass," Darius said in a steady voice everybody in the column could hear. "It's going to miss us. Can you strike back at them?"

Andrap' answer was buried in the thud of a crane hitting the ground a meter away from Darius, who didn't glance at it. Ryou did, and noticed the bird-statue was cruder now. Even Ryou's horse started prancing a little, but Hamado, who'd been behind Darius, quickly gathered its reins and shushed it. 

"No, I can't stop them," Andrap said. "We need to leave the circle. It would be best if you and Ujie Ryou stayed with me."

Darius gave him a Look, a long narrow-eyed 'we are going to have a talk about this later’ Look. Then he motioned at Ryou to follow the Passer, heading back up the column, back the way they’d come. "Dio, carry Periklan. Jexen, Hamado, close the march. Get any of the loose horses if they'll come, otherwise screw them. Just make sure the men get out."

"Yes my Lord," said Jexen tightly, hefting his second javelin. 

Ryou followed Darius and Andrap back over the bridge and to the tail-end of the column which had not crossed yet. The Hounds got a quick hold of their wild-eyed looks and open fear when they met Darius’s gaze. They became focused, professional, weapons firm in one hand as they held their horses on a tight rein with the other. The Greek merchant and his men were right at the end of the convoy, having ceded their place to a Lord without a second thought. He and his two men looked scared. Ryou didn’t blame them...

Andrap was up ahead, looking at the distant stelae and then to the spot where the inn had been. On this side of the bridge, Ryou had half hoped to see it reappear again. The Path was there...but the inn must have vanished to safety with its remaining Passer and staff when the attack was felt. 

Ryou’s senses, focusing on his surroundings, twanged. Behind him, Andrap turned back sharply and took three steps, hand raised towards the black object hurtling towards the middle of the column. 

A horse reared and fought its master. Almost above their heads, the crane diminished and disappeared, but it'd been close. Ryou had tried to watch and sense what Andrap was doing in order to help him, but there was too much going on in the ether around them. 

The Passer was sweating now, expression grim. There was conflict scrawled across his face as he glanced over his shoulder at the head of the column and then at its straggling end, a dozen men too far away for him to properly cover. 

“Go,” Ryou said quickly. “I can see the Path back to Assyria now that we're past the bridge. I can lead them.”

Andrap hesitated.

“If Ryou says he can do it, he will, so go protect my men,” Darius growled. In punctuation to the order, another crane had thudded down among the baggage horses, causing one of them to rip away from the Hound holding it and bolt, away from the Path and into the labyrinth of oblivion. The animal was no longer visible after only five strides, poor creature. The crane that’d nearly struck the horse had not been moving its wings this time, it’d come down like a catapult stone. So did the other that followed. From where Ryou stood, they no longer looked well formed, just crude simulacrums of a bird statue.

Andrap looked torn. “But what if you’re attacked-“

“We’ll duck. Go!” ordered Darius, shoving the Passer towards the back of the column. 

“This way,” Ryou told the Greek merchant, who was so relieved to be told what to do by someone who seemed to know that he followed without question. The Hound behind him, known to his friends as Brutal Shiim, looked like he'd have preferred a certified Passer to lead them. He hesitated- and got told off sharply by Dio, coming up behind them with Periklan's arm over one shoulder, Bareil propping up the unconscious man on the other side.

Ryou moved ahead of the column, concentrating on the Path up ahead rather than the movement of the people behind him. His eyes couldn't tell the difference between one patch of dirt and the next, but in his inner mind's eye, there was a road, a series of interconnected tunnels through the areas of dimensional uncertainty. Walk one meter this way, turn sharply- a bend up there and then straight ahead for a few paces. Ryou walked forward, focusing on marking the Path with the Passer’s staff while all the time, prickles of anxiety ran up and down his back which had never felt so vulnerable and exposed. But all the cannonball/cranes were falling behind them, quite a distance away towards the far back of the column. The sound of distant thuds was coming more frequently, but seemed scattered. Andrap was letting most of them through and from the lack of horse screams, they weren’t falling near the fleeing rearguard. 

"Why are they changing tactics?" he wondered out loud. The air was cool, but Ryou was sweating at the effort of moving with only his wispy inner sense as a guide. 

“It takes time to aim correctly,” Darius grunted. “Now that we're moving, they can’t adjust as well.” Which sounded reassuring, until he added, "Either that or they're chasing us away from their location, or towards something worse."

Ryou's steps slowed. He couldn't see anything, or feel anything ominous, but...Maybe he should have let Andrap take the lead after all. 

"Go," said Darius calmly. He had his sword drawn, standing right next to Ryou, a rampart. Ryou took a deep breath as discreetly as he could, picking up the pace again. He could hear more thuds behind him now, either Andrap was letting the really poorly aimed shots fall harmlessly around the column, or else the Passer was getting tired. Time to leave.

They were back to where the inn had been, but there was no sanctuary here, so Ryou had to lead them further, all the way to the stelae. But that was a whole lot easier than the previous stretch of the journey. They were already back in Assyria's plane by now, they just had to safely get out of this region of spatial uncertainty, and for that they had to exit between two of the stelae in particular, an invisible 'door' held open for travelers wanting to enter into the border. Ryou could see them as clearly as if they were highlighted in neon, two otherwise unassuming rock pillars off to his left. Ryou lead that way as quickly as he dared while wary of a possible ambush. 

When he reached the stones, he gestured the merchant forward. The portly Greek trader sprinted through the border’s edge. His men followed, hauling at the mules. One of the mercenaries had the thoughtfulness to turn back and shout, “He did it! We’re out! I can see the Mooncrest Bridge, and Sura in the distance.”

“Ryou, go,” Darius said, nudging Ryou forward.

“Are you leaving?” 

“I have to see my men out.”

Ryou planted the Passer’s walking stick in the turf and gestured Dio and Bareil to pass by him and cross the border. Dio shifted the Passer’s weight to Bareil and nodded his partner forward.

“Ryou,” Darius growled.

“I'm staying here. I can feel them coming,” Ryou said. Back at the rear of the column, another crane barreled in only to be obliterated by Andrap, who was lagging several meters behind the last horse.

“Yeah, we’re back where we started,” Bareil reported from outside the circle. “I can’t see the sanctuary, but everything else is normal.”

“Go ahead, sir,” said Dio, gripping his sword. Ryou had to marvel at the professionalism of all the Hounds in the face of supernatural forces they could not counter. “Both of you get to the other side, I’ll see the men out.”

“It’s likely you they’re aiming for, Darius,” Ryou pointed out when his lover looked reluctant to take his own medicine.

“Fine,” Darius growled with one last look at the column. Four more Hounds had left the circle, only a few more men to go counting Andrap. 

The edge of the circle was a line of force in Ryou's mind, somehow maintained by the innocuous-looking stelae which fenced in the instability that was the border. Beyond them, the Taibor twinkled beneath the morning sun. Darius stepped toward the edge-

Something changed.

“Stop!” bellowed Andrap far behind them.

Ryou stumbled to a halt, hand shooting out to catch Darius- but it was too late. 

The ground crumbled beneath them, breaking apart as if the turf had been hiding a crevasse, and they dropped through it into a new landscape that was no longer Assyria.


	4. Chapter 4

Ryou fell on top of Darius, which spared him some of the bruises he'd have otherwise picked up. Darius grunted under Ryou’s weight, steadied him and then struggled to sit up, mouth already forming some pretty horrendous curses. But Ryou for his part could only stay frozen on hands and knees, legs tangled with Darius's. 

“We...fell,” he croaked.

“Enlil enlightened you, did he?” Darius growled. “First we get attacked by fucking bird statues, then we get dropped-...where the hell are we anyway? Did you- Ryou?! What's the matter?! You’re as white as a corpse!”

A corpse would feel considerably better than Ryou did just this minute.

"I-...we-..." Ryou's body was distant, numb, it was somebody else who was swaying, face drained of blood and clammy with cold sweat. His hands gripped the loose soil in an effort to anchor himself, but it still felt as if he was several meters away from the sensation. “We went...very, very far. My head-...I feel like we fell forever.” 

“It was only a small tumble. Three strides at most.”

“I _know_. That’s what makes it so bad.”

Darius made a puzzled noise, but didn’t ask, just held Ryou by the shoulders and waited.

Ryou took a few wobbly inhales, trying to force his mind past that horrible schism. His body knew their one-second misstep had been a meter, tops, while his inner sense insisted they'd fallen a distance measurable in thousands of kilometres, or possibly light years. He shuddered, fighting the surge of nausea attacking the bread and cheese he’d had back in his room shortly before mounting on his horse this morning.

“The others?” he grunted.

“Not here. Murdeen was right on our heels, but either he stopped in time or he ended up in Sura. I hope.”

“It was aiming at us.”

“What was?”

"Don't know. But it needed the edge. The edge of the circle, where non-space leads to space. There's a place of transition at that spot, and it feels like we slipped between the border and Assyria, and out into-...who knows. I think the crane statues were just a way of taking out the Passers, or to distract Andrap. He must have been following us since our departure, that’s the only way he could have shown up as fast as he did when we were bombarded. He saw this new attack coming, he told us to stop right before it happened. At least I think he did. Didn't he? Er, Darius...?"

Ryou realized he was giving conclusions for his benefit alone. Darius wasn’t even grunting an assent. Ryou glanced up at his lover to find the latter staring fixedly at their surroundings. So Ryou looked too.

A tall hill rose sharply nearby, as big as the hill supporting the entire city of Sura. It was entirely deserted and barren, other than the stairs. They zigged and zagged their steep way up the prominence in sets of uneven grey stone slabs, the only sign of anything manmade. There were no buildings anywhere, no barley or wheat planted in the plains at the foot of the hill, no signposts or roads. Only dust, sand, rock, clumps of dry vegetation without leaves, and here and there little outcroppings of complete and utter madness. 

Ryou stared fixedly at a bush ten meters away that appeared to be burning. Though he was pretty sure it wasn't. There was something...organic about the way the 'fire' squirmed around the branches without any appearance of consuming them. It slithered as it crackled, dripping to the ground like phosphorus where it vanished in a puff of smoke. 

Something moved at the periphery of Ryou's vision. He flinched- but it was not a statue of a crane, it was two rocks, one covered in ugly green lichen that looked virtually fossilized, tumbling over each other in mid-air. Five revolutions a minute, thought Ryou analytically. That was just about the only rational thing one could say about it.

Several stones on the hill before them were perched at angles that defied gravity. Very, very literally. In fact it was rapidly clear gravity had no say in their configuration whatsoever. Some of them were even floating. Ryou scrutinized the nearest, a rock the size of a car resting precariously on a stone the size of a bento box, which in turn stood on absolutely nothing a foot above the ground. There was a small tree atop of this assemblage, roots gnarled and twisting around the rock. Half of its branches were lifeless, the other half had melted like plastic, stretching and sagging towards the stone where they’d dripped off and coagulated into improbable wooden puddles. 

Ryou tore his eyes away, and looked around more carefully. Like his first impression, the surroundings appeared almost normal until he concentrated on a particular stretch of it and then he would discern some surreal detail that should have immediately jumped out at him. Ten meters to their left was a rock as large as he was, yet as transparent as cheap glass; bubbles rose through it at a snail’s pace until they broke the surface in small craters which slowly filled in again. Almost at their feet, another stone, no more than fist-sized, rolled silently around in a circle, a deep groove in the sand a witness to the time it had been at its task. 

Dust and grit hung in the air in odd patterns, unmoving, like dust devils petrified in the act of twisting their way around the maze of rocks. There were no animals in this surreal landscape, no birds, no insect, nothing. Even the gray, dusty grass looked fossilized, and Ryou found himself unable to believe it could actually grow. The sky above them was more animated, full of odd contrails and flashes of light always out of Ryou's direct line of sight.

Ryou managed to speak after clearing out his throat. "Are we back in the Broken Lands?"

"Dunno." Darius was still looking around slowly. "Did you do anything that might have transported us back there?" 

"No, nothing at all." 

"Then I doubt we're back in the Broken Lands, more's the pity." Darius tilted his head, his gaze traveling up the hill to its very top. He squinted. "What’s that up there? More rocks?"

Ryou looked up. "No, looks like a building. It could be ruins, but if so, they’re very big. I-" Then he made a strangled sound. His gaze had leapt up from what might be a man-made monticule and fastened on the sky above it.

"Ryou? What's wrong, what do you see?"

"What-..." Ryou could barely recognize his own voice. Even his ability to stay calm and analytical in all circumstances couldn’t handle this out of the gate. "What-...in the sky, what is _that_?"

"What? Where?"

"Above-...above...everything."

"That's just a cloud. Never mind that, where are we? Do you have any idea?"

Ryou grabbed his shoulder and jabbed a finger at the sky. " _Look_."

"What? I told you, it's a-..." 

Darius fell silent. Like Ryou, he must be tracing the object that looked like a dark cloud due to the way distance and atmosphere blurred it. But the human eye was better at grasping perspective and a feel for consistency than that. Those edges were too sharp to be a cloud, too smooth to be anything wispy. Ryou followed the shape with his eyes until it joined others, a solid body, and then his gaze swept out and out and out and down and across as far as the horizon to their right.

Look at the way the light catches the edges, said Ryou's brain, scrabbling to cling to ‘analytical’; it’s definitely not a cloud, it’s too opaque. Could it be dust? No, it's too _solid_ , there's no drift to it anywhere, no...no billowing or ragged edges. But damn it, it's _taking up half the horizon_. If this is an object - it's not possible for something of that mass to be up there. If it's solid (oh yes, it's solid, Ryou's instincts informed him) then it must be in orbit or beyond, and that makes it...insanely big. The size of China. Probably bigger. How is it not falling into our gravity, or tearing the world apart with its mass alone...?

That question was hard enough to deal with, but it was considerably friendlier than anything else Ryou’s mind might dwell on, such as the fact that the thing did not actually look like a rock, or dust, or any celestial object rolled into a ball by gravity. Those massive projections, each considerably longer than the Japanese archipelago, looked a lot like trailing tentacles... 

"Ashur protect us and grant us a clean death," Darius said under his breath.

"What is it?" Ryou whispered hoarsely. He felt crushed by the sheer magnitude of what his brain was telling him he was looking at. 

"No idea, but _that_...That can only mean one thing. We are beyond the Outlands, beyond the Veil, in the land of death."

They knelt there side by side, unable to move, to even think of moving under that awful sky...And then, shocking in the silence, stones clattered behind them.

"Inder!" Darius spat out, twisting around and sword swinging up. It'd not been a swearword but an invocation, the battle cry for the very last battle.

And then this kid ran past them less than a stone's throw away.

Darius and Ryou stayed frozen to the spot in amazement. The boy was young, no more than ten, dressed in a knee-length linen skirt and a golden belt. An elaborate golden chestpiece hung from his neck and bounced against his chest in time with his leaps across the dusty terrain. His head was shaved, and bore khol markings or possibly tattoos of odd shapes. His sandals flashed golden as he leapt nimbly over rocks. He only stopped on the first step of the stairs where he glanced back over his shoulder at them with a grin full of teeth. Once he was sure they were looking at him, he ran up the stairs, taking the shallower ones two at a time and helping himself with his hands over the steeper sections. 

There'd been no mistaking that look. The kid was beckoning them to follow.

"Ryou." Darius's eyes were following the kid's ascent up the stairs. "Can you get us out of here?"

Ryou looked around. There were lumps of eroded rocks around them in what might once have been a circle of stelae, one ice-age and some continental drift ago, but the ether here felt as dead as the topsoil. "I don't think so. I...I can try. I guess. If we really have to. I'm not sure what will happen, though."

They were silent. The kid was up thirty meters already. 

"I guess we better see who lives in this godforsaken hell first," said Darius, sheathing his sword and getting to his feet. He gave the sky one last glare - Ryou thought it looked faintly challenging - and then he glanced down. "Can you stand?"

"Yes. I feel better."

"Will you be able to follow me and that mountain goat up the stairs?"

"I guess I'll have to," sighed Ryou, standing up, dusting himself off and doing his best to ignore the insanity of the countryside all around them. 

 

Ryou made the mistake of glancing down three quarters of the way up, and had to sit down for a minute as a result. 

"I don't like this place," Darius said as if drawing a matured and deliberate conclusion. He was looking down the stairs, however unadvisable that was. 

"Yeah..." Ryou rubbed his itching eyes. It was so dry here. His skin felt like paper. He put his glasses back on and studiously kept his gaze on the horizon. Even the giant whatever in the sky was better than looking at the stairs...They'd been steep coming up but now, by some twist in this plane's geometry, they'd straightened out like an accordion so that five steps below from where Ryou sat, there was nothing but a cliff. This hadn't done Ryou's inner ear any good after its earlier shakeup. It also meant they had no choice but to continue up, or trust that this was some kind of illusion on par with the Broken Lands, finding out with one step whether the stairs were still there. It would be a rather final step if they were not.

"Look on the bright side," said Ryou.

"I think your Gift of Zaratusra must have lost its glue, because I could have sworn you just said you saw a bright side," growled his lover, looking down at him.

"There's so far a conspicuous absence of Furies and other monsters."

"Inder and Ashur, Ryou, don't bring bad luck down on us."

"Sorry," said Ryou not very repentantly. 

"As for monstrosities, there's _that_." Darius jabbed a finger at the horizon.

"I believe that thing in the sky is not alive, because I cannot imagine that it is," Ryou replied calmly. "It would force me to question too many basic concepts of biology and physics. If by some insane chance it is, then we could not register on its perception unless it happened to have a microscope the size of Hokkaido on its person."

"...What?" 

"Never mind. How far are we from the top?" 

"Another two hundred strides, I’d say. Can you make it?" 

"Yes, sorry, I just had to catch my breath." 

Ryou got to his feet, ignoring the feeling that _things_ were crawling just outside his perception. Darius had said he did not have that problem, but he did not have Ryou's extra senses either. Ryou rubbed his eyes for the tenth time. They ached under the confusion of signals, and felt gritty. There was no wind in this place. The sun shone, but brought no warmth to the grey rocks. Neither had it moved an iota across the sky it was nailed to, despite Ryou’s Seiko – still going strong, a tiny drop of modern efficiency and sanity – indicating they’d been climbing for an hour and ten minutes. In all this time, they had seen no sign of plant or animal life. What did that kid live on...? Darius had already put forth a couple of hypotheses as they made their way up the stairs; either the kid was a cannibal that fed off of stranded travelers, or he was not there at all, some kind of illusion cast by a siren to lure them to their unsuspecting deaths. Ryou doubted the latter theory. The kid had seemed pretty well-fed to give the first any credence. Ryou put his mind to this and other puzzles as he walked up the steps composedly, saving his strength and denying the urge to leap up them out of fear he'd feel that last one suddenly shift and straighten out beneath his feet.

By the time they reached the top, Ryou’s feet and calves were aching, a surefire sign if he’d needed one that this was not, unfortunately, some bizarre dream. Ryou breathed deeply a few times, bent and stretched his legs, then straightened to get a good look at the small plateau they’d reached and the building which dominated this entire landscape. 

It was a ziggurat, two great square tiers set one atop the other, both with slanted walls and – oh great – yet more steps up a ramp cutting into them both. It rose up to the second tier which supported a pyramidal structure. The whole was built of the same grey stone as the landscape, and just as cheerful to behold. The entire top of the plateau around it was paved flat with stones cut in large geometric designs, like a map of an ornamental garden that was doomed to never grow.

The kid was nowhere in sight, but there was nowhere else to go, so the two them trudged across the flagstones towards the ramp up the building, and started climbing. 

"Don't look back," Darius said grimly after a few steps. Ryou swallowed and did as he was told. Darius was walking right behind him and put a hand on Ryou's lower back to either steady him or keep him from turning.

They got to the top of the ramp and looked around. The stones beneath their feet were huge, the size of two cars each. They fitted without cement yet so seamlessly that Ryou was ready to believe they were watertight. There was no sign of decay to the building, which kept touching off sparks of surprise in Ryou’s mind; it was pristine enough that it could have been built yesterday, but it _felt_ very, very old. 

The top of the square was forty meters by forty. The pyramid rose at the center of it. A large entrance was cut into its side, closed by double doors of rusty red metal decorated with iron pictograms inset into geometrical panels. While Ryou watched, something that looked awfully like the same black iron as the pictograms slowly coiled through the grooves between panels like a snake leisurely navigating a maze, stretching and shrinking but always, Ryou noticed after several minutes of uneasy observation, always with one part of itself spanning both doors to lock them together.

"I don’t think we're supposed to go in through there," Ryou said weakly.

"The kid's over there," Darius said, concentrating on the practical. "More stairs. How are you doing?" 

"I'm fine."

A ghost of a smile twisted the corner of Darius's mouth and was gone. Then he strode across the stone of the tier towards the side of the pyramidal structure. The kid was there, hands on his knees as he leaned forward to see if they would follow. He really had a very unpleasant grin on his face for such a young person.

The pyramid was thirty meters high, and did not rise continuously to its summit. Four fifths of the way up, it flattened to leave way to a structure of pillars and woven tapestries that supported a pyramidal wooden roof that topped off the point of the whole ziggurat. The wood of the roof was gilded with gold, the tapestries were as splendid as any in Sura's palace, a thick linen base so heavily embroidered with gold thread, silk and semi-precious stones that they looked as stiff as a board, hanging from golden ropes from the roof .The boy slipped beneath one of them. Darius did not hesitate; he drew his sword and followed. Ryou did so as well, absently wishing he had some kind of weapon other than his table knife. He didn't think it'd help with what they were about to face, but the psychological value should not be underestimated. A pity he'd dropped Periklan's walking stick when the transition from Mooncrest to this place had hit him.

For a heart-stopping moment, Ryou thought the space beyond the tapestries was full of monstrous creature. But they were only statues, Ryou realized, breathing again. Statues of shiny black stone depicting men and women with thick animal heads, each carrying a different and heavily stylized object. They were creepy enough until Ryou remembered the crane statues and had another cardiac moment. 

The statues stayed where they were, unmoving, ringing the interior of the pavilion. They looked as solid and immobile as statues should. Ryou and Darius exchanged a glance, then moved forward through the rank of frozen sentries. 

Two large braziers drifted trails of smoke across the space. From the scent, their purpose was the burning of incense rather than any illumination their smoldering embers could provide. Most of the light came from the inanimate sunshine falling through the open sides, chopped to pieces by the tapestries until it fell in unmoving shards of light and shadow on the mosaics of the floor. At the very center of the room was a high pyramidal dais of a dozen steps. The top was decorated with carved pillars and veils hanging limply for lack of a breeze; it looked like they'd petrified there waiting for one. The pillars and veils surrounded a low wide throne made of stone and ornamented with alabaster, gold, lapis lazuli, malachite and more. On the throne sat a man in a stiff, formal pose, an enameled red scepter in the shape of a hook crossed over his chest. He wore a pale mask with a bizarre cylindrical beard attached to the chin.

"Well fuck me," said Darius with vicious satisfaction. "So you cocksucking Imperials _are_ behind this after all."

"Imperials?" Ryou looked from Darius to the figure on the throne. "Romans?"

"Oh yeah, that's a Roman high priest getup, I've seen it in conquered cities."

"Priest? It's a Priest of Aten?" Ryou remembered something Haaskoning had said, a crazy rumor of who had kidnapped Darius the first time around. 

"You are mistaken."

The voice was a whisper, pleasant, cultured, like one of the better paid voice actors projecting through stereo. Ryou and Darius twisted around, because that voice seemed to have come from right behind them as well as in front. But there were only two people present, the boy sitting halfway up the steps to the throne and the man with the mask.

"We do not look like a Priest of Aten. It is the Atenites who look like us."

Wait. It wasn't a mask.

Ryou had been looking at him when the man spoke, though the voice still echoed from just about everywhere around the room (and Ryou had the uncanny feeling that this was not just due to odd acoustics). The man's mouth had moved. That was his _face_. Except for the beard which was jeweled and looked attached to his headdress by string, but the rest of his face...Ryou narrowed his eyes and then stepped forward to get a better look, ignoring Darius's hiss of caution. It did not matter, they were here, in this person's power; Ryou could feel it all around them like hands on his shoulders. 

The face had the beauty of carved statues. It was as if this man - this priest? - had sculpted his own features into that semblance of beauty, smooth, unblemished, regular beyond anything nature could produce. The result was not beautiful to Ryou's eyes; it looked like a funerary mask made of real flesh. Ryou, obscurely repulsed, still moved forward until he was at a distance where he could look at the creature comfortably while not being crushed by the height of the dais and forced to crane his neck. Darius stopped at his side.

"Are you the ones who tried to kill Darius two months ago?" Ryou asked, just to get the ball rolling.

There was an odd pause. Ryou had noticed it the last time the man had spoken too. As if he had to remember how to move his lips in time with his words. And then he said, "Yes."

That was all. Straight and to the point, and no attempt to justify or excuse himself. 

Darius snorted in humorless appreciation. "No need to be coy, huh? Okay, so you went to some lengths to strike at me again today. This is a bit beyond banishing me to the No Man's land though, and I have the feeling you made damn sure Ryou was brought here as well. So, who the hell are you and what do you want with us?"

This time it was the boy who piped up.

"We are the Eternal Priesthood," the boy recited. "We are the servants of the Old Gods. We are the serpent Alep in the shadow of Aten the False. We are the wings of Kemwer Horus as he rises. We are the scepter of Seth in the hands of the Kings of Old. We are the crook and flail of Kenti-Amentiu Osiris as he rules the West. We are the Ancient Ones, the Ones who Remember, and we are evermore the true masters of Ma'at, unlike those servile dogs of the Per Gathas. Cocksucking dogs," the boy added in a lower tone full of satisfaction. Ryou had the feeling this extemporization was inspired by Darius's earlier comment. So the boy was ten after all, that much was probably not an illusion.

"You're Egyptian?" Ryou asked, running all that through his mind and finding odd echoes of it from an old manga he'd read years ago, about mummy's curses and pyramids. "Horus and Osiris and all that, those are old Egyptian gods."

The boy, startled, looked quickly up at the man on the throne who of course did not betray any expression. Ryou wondered if the creature could. 

"Egyptian?" Darius looked from the man on the throne to Ryou. "He looks a little bit like an Atenite, but I never heard of those deities before, and anyway the Egyptians are all dead."

There was an odd creak from around them. The tapestries swayed in a breeze that seemed to come from the center of the room. 

"Tell us where you are from," the man said, leaning forward slightly. 

"From Ezo," Ryou answered promptly.

"Liar," said the kid near the throne, teeth bared in a vicious grin. 

A silence swept by like a dead breeze. "We have heard of the old land," said the whisper around them. "But it has been taken over by Allah in the same way Aten took over in the Outlands. We are not them. We are the Ancients. We are the only ones who Remember." The figure sat back again. His eyes were as fixed as stone, it was hard for Ryou to tell where he was looking.

"Fine. Now that that's all established, what do you want with us?" Darius asked abruptly.

The Ancient priest did not answer, it was the kid who said: "An offer. He wishes to make an offer to the magian. And we have a pact for you, Assyrian, since you know how to make such good friends."

A new silence reigned. These guys really knew their pauses, Ryou thought sarcastically. "So, what's your offer?" he was forced to ask before he and Darius gathered dust like the statues back there.

"You will be immortal."

"...What?" Ryou asked after trying to make sense of that. 

"At our side, you will live forever," said the creature on his dais of stone. "Can those slaves of Zoroaster offer you that? They cannot. We are the only true priests of Ma'at, and Ma'at has seen to it that we have reign over all things. Join us, and become one with Ma'at."

"I don't know who Ma'at is, but Ryou is not interested," said Darius, tapping his sword against his palm.

"You will lose that dirty mortality like a cloak, and you will rise with us," said the Ancient, completely ignoring Darius. In fact Ryou wondered if the man had somehow persuaded himself he could not hear him; he'd acted as if Ryou was his only visitor from the start, it'd been the kid who'd addressed Darius each time. "You are already one of us, one who masters Ma'at. I can see your power shining at your brow like a star. Do not be a dog at the beckoning of a long-gone master."

"You want me to join your group," Ryou interpreted. He should have known. Powerful magians were just not left alone to wander around in peace, they were bound to be press ganged by one side or the other. "Who are you? I mean, beyond all the religious stuff."

Once more that pause. It was amazing how many subconscious cues the human mind picked up during a conversation. Ryou's instinct was telling him this did not feel like the pause of a man thinking, but of someone answering after the timelag of a long distance conversation. 

Then the voice that seemed to come from both the figure and from an inch behind Ryou's ear said: "You belong with us, without a doubt. We too ask a lot of questions. But unlike the Per Gathas, we dare to find our answers. Once you've been through the Journey, your mind will pierce through the base matter that clouds you from Ma'at, from the fundamental order and truth of all Being. We can see your mind. It is bright and sharp with questions. Yes, you will like your new life, and your new name. We will choose it with great care. It will fit you better than that sack you call your skin."

Ryou decided right then and there that he did not like hearing this creature discuss any of his body parts. 

"You will start the Journey out in Ma'at, of course. You will enjoy all the pleasures that the body can, without restriction, though I do not think you are one to seek those petty truths for very long. When you are ready, you will join us here, as One who Remembers, beneath the dreaded shadow of the Old Gods where you will live as one with their knowledge and know no fear."

"That sounds very interesting," Ryou lied. "Can you tell me more? Where are we exactly?"

Pause, then, "Join us."

"I'll need more information before I make up my mind, as well as some time to consider my decision. By the sound of it, this is not something to undertake lightly. How many of you Ancients are there? Are they all here? Is this place really outside of the Outlands?"

There was the sound like a creak of old wood breaking by inches, echoes piling up until Ryou realized, skin crawling, that the human-shaped thing on the throne was laughing. 

"You have been talking to the Per Gathas. The pale shadow you call Haaskoning has made you his own pitiful offer. Did he promise you anything? Or did he simply say that he would give you all the time in the world to make up your mind to join them, while giving you many dreadful warnings of the dangers you were in if you used the gifts the Old Gods have given you, until he locked them up with chains of fear like a lotus that will never bloom."

Ryou found himself unable to retort, since that was certainly one way of seeing his conversation with Haaskoning.

“His words were poison, meant to paralyze and kill you slowly. What fears did those warnings breed? When will they hound you to his side? Make no mistake, he wants you too. He protected you from us very carefully, so that by the time you would join him willingly, you would not hear what we might have to offer. We tried to approach you by natural means, and then we tried those means given to us by the Old Gods, but his agents have ever been around you, in the heap of rocks they call a palace, in the roads and buildings, everywhere, watching you and your every move in secret. But the fool did not stop you from walking through the fractures of Ma’at. He sent one of his strongest soldiers to watch over you, but in that area, we are the stronger. We took you away from him, to this place where no lick-spittle of Zoroaster can ever reach. Now it is too late for Haaskoning. He should not have given you the illusion of choice, nor let you wander away from him without putting his mark on your Sheut. The loss of the curs of the Gathas is our gain. You can think about my offer. _Here_. You will not leave this land until you choose to join us. If you accept to undertake the Journey, you may leave as one of us. If not, we will find some use for you, or for your body.”

“What an offer,” Darius muttered sardonically. 

"That's coercion," Ryou agreed. "Are you saying you'll force me to join you with threats and against my free will?"

“You cannot refuse,” said the Old one as if the notion had not even entered his mind. “Unlike the Per Gathas, we do not demand you sacrifice any allegiance you already have. You seem bound to Assyria. There could have been better choices, but if that is the land you have decided to favor with your presence and council, then it is a fortunate thing for that country of goat herders. They will benefit from this as well.”

Darius perked up. “Oh, is it my turn now? I can’t wait to find out what my deal is going to be.”

"You’re just hoping it’ll be as good as mine,” Ryou muttered, fatalistically sure now that they would not be able to talk or fight their way out of this situation. They were going to either have to accept whatever this man had in mind, and hope it could be undone later...or as Darius said, may Ashur grant them a clean death.

The Ancient priest fell silent, it was the kid who picked up the thread of the conversation as if reading from a prompt screen. “The interests of the Ancient Ones are linked with the group of barbarians who are deluded enough to call themselves an Empire.”

“Knew it,” Darius said under his breath.

“However, we would be pleased to have allies in the Oldest Countries. You are a powerful man in those lands, Lord Ghan. A dangerous man. You have new ideas." The kid said 'new' as if it were some kind of disease. "Not only did you oppose the Romans most successfully, but the ideas you have planted could become the seeds of resistance to the Empire when it once more spreads forth. Some of our brothers have taken upon themselves the task of preparing the Pariya region for our future dominance. They sought to have you destroyed as part of these preparations. Their failure turned into a fortune from the Old Gods. Now, instead of destroying you and your country, we offer to nurture this resistance under our guidance. When next the might of countries clash, Assyria will remain predominant. Roma Praetorium will have to negotiate a truce on your borders, allowing you your share of those weaker countries that will inevitably fall."

“I see.” Darius scratched his chin. “Hey, kid, what’s your name?”

The boy looked startled. “My name?”

“Yeah, I like to know who I’m dealing with. And what’s _his_ name? I’m asking you since he doesn’t seem to want to sully his ears by pretending he can hear me.”

The look the boy shot the Old One was quick and wary. “His name cannot be spoken or heard by the profane.”

“Lovely. And you?”

Another quick look and hesitation. “I don’t have a name yet.”

“Oh. I guess I’ll just have to call you ‘Kid’ then,” said Darius with a smirk.

“You shall not,” the boy shot back with the scowl of a ten year old. “I am the servant of the Priest, I live in the shadow of one of the Old Gods. I know more than you would if you lived ten lifetimes. I’m not a _kid_.”

“Right, kid-“

The kid flushed. “Hey-“

“-let me see if I understood this right. Stop me when I get it wrong, will you? Your boss and his friends are living off the Roman Empire like maggots off a dead tree. They were going to take me out when it looked like I was going to kick the Imperials back to their starting point, and maybe shape the Assyrian army to resist them better next time they come our way. But now you’ve decided that you can live off of two trees just as well as one, so you want Assyria to become the greatest power in the Pariya region and beyond with your help, and let you feast off the countries we subjugate like it sounds you’re feasting off the Romans and their provinces.”

“You’re forgetting the bit where I live in Assyria as one of these people, and get to do whatever I want with a country that is essentially considered my territory and exclusive playground,” Ryou added. 

“Huh-uh, that too. What a deal. So, kid, did I get it right?”

The boy had gone terribly pale, and looked too frightened to answer or glance up at the throne, his black eyes fixed on Darius. 

“So tell the Lord of Maggots up there to let us go so I can take his offer to my king, as it is not a decision I have the authority to make. King Leyam went to lengths to refuse that kind of arrangement from the Romans, but you know, maybe he’ll be interested this time. He can-”

The frozen alabaster hands twitched. 

The boy jumped up from the steps, turning towards the Priest with a desperate, “No, wait- please-“

Darius blinked and his head jerked. His sword dropped with a clang as he staggered back, eyes wide. 

“Darius? What’s wrong?!” Ryou had felt something confused move around them, it’d smelt of burnt umber and felt like a noose.

Darius fell to the ground as if his balance had completely disappeared. His eyes were wild, he was shoving at things Ryou could not see, and he flinched away when Ryou grabbed his shoulder as if the helping hand had burned him. He tried to catch himself- snatched his hands back with a cry of pain when they touched the mosaics and hunched over them, shaking. 

“What did you do?!” Ryou shouted back at the Ancient.

“We gave him a gift to hasten both your decisions.” The malachite eyes were fixed like those of a statue. He didn’t even gloat. The boy had shrunk down on the steps again, seemingly smaller than before, biting his lip as he looked at the man writhing on the floor. 

Darius was speaking...but Ryou suddenly realized he could not make out what he was saying, and not only because of the gasps of pain. It was as if each word was hacked up and stitched into another. Then Darius clenched his teeth stubbornly, eyes screwed shut, hands fisted at his ribs, his body flinching in agony at something that Ryou could not see. 

“Your decision,” said the mask. “We offer you immortality and power, and we offer you this man’s life in addition. We warn you, many more heartbeats of this will be more than his mind can stand. If you do not want to get him back as a gibbering lunatic, you will do well to give us your answer now.”

Darius’s garbled words...that’s what clued Ryou in. He took his hand away, since his touch brought pain rather than comfort. Instead, he used his inner sense to ‘look’. 

It was similar to the Gift of Zaratusra, a film existing right on the edge where Darius's mind touched the higher dimension. But unlike the gift, this ugly thing bolted onto Darius's perceptions was all _wrong_. Instead of decoding incoming signals, it was altering them so that everything came through jumbled- _everything_! With a squirm of panic, Ryou felt this interference going deeper than the Gift, and from the way Darius was reacting, it was not just words getting changed, every sensory input was getting scrambled and also amplified. Darius was in a world where everything he saw, heard, touched or smelled was being put through a blender and changed into something harmful. The mosaic of the floor could be cutting him like glass, his own hands burning him like hot coals, Ryou’s words howling like a storm...If sense deprivation could cause someone to crack after awhile, how much more damage could this horror do? It was- it was going to destroy his mind! Ryou had to- to-

Ryou could not say for sure what he did. His hands hovered uselessly over Darius’s shoulders. But on another plane, his inner sense reached out, touched, gripped the twisted alien thing overlaying his lover's mind and _pulled_ , straightening it out.

Darius gasped and went limp. Ryou barely managed to catch him before he banged his head on the tiled floor. Ryou’s panic flared- but then Darius blinked and rubbed his eyes with a hand visibly shaking, and looked around as if things were making sense again. 

Ryou's insides felt like they'd been turned to jelly by the succession of horror, adrenaline and then relief. And then horror again as he caught the sweep of a white linen robe at the periphery of his vision. He tensed and glanced up, to see the Priest standing over him and looking down at Darius, those artificial features like a mask even this close up. Ryou stared at the creature without comprehension for a scant second, his mind still in two different places. A part of him could not believe this creature could move, stuck here as he was at the center of this half-baked dimension. Stuck? Where had that mental picture come from...?

"How very interesting." Even this close, the whisper seemed to come from everywhere. "We have never seen anyone do that before." 

Ryou edged himself between the priest and Darius, though he did not know what to do to stop the man from casting that spell again. Darius, still on the ground, reached out for the sword that had skittered some distance away. He glanced around for it and muttered, "Bugger." Ryou took his eyes off the Ancient for a moment. The statues of beast-men were no longer around the periphery of the room, but a whole lot closer. In fact one was looming right over them, though Ryou had not seen or heard it move.

"Did you do that on instinct?" asked the Ancient One. "Yes, it must be instinct. Unfortunate, maybe, but you could not know better, and you do not have the strength to do anything other than change it. But what an interesting configuration now. See?" he added, and Ryou had the obscure feeling the Old One was now talking to the boy, and somehow pointing something out. The boy stayed crouched on the stairs, staring at Darius with an unreadable expression on his young features.

"What did the ball-less arse say?" growled Darius, his eyes still on the statue of the cow-headed creature less than two meters away.

"I'm not sure," Ryou muttered. "It wasn't clear to me either."

"If it wasn't clear to you," said the Old One after that usual singular pause, "then it will be complete garbage to him." 

Ryou looked at the flesh mask and then at Darius, who was inching away and giving the distance from the statue to his weapon a measuring look. He looked fine. "What do you mean? Why did you say unfortunate? I fixed-...whatever you did."

"Ryou, can you still understand what the freak is saying? I can't anymore," said Darius, getting slowly to his feet. "Sounds like he's talking backwards."

Ryou stayed on his knees, confounded, as understanding trickled through his mind like ice-cold water. No. Oh no. "You understand me, though. Right?" he asked tightly.

"Of course." Darius made discreet 'get up' gestures at Ryou, who scrambled to his feet and faced the Old One.

"What did you do?!" Ryou demanded.

"What did _you_ do?" echoed the boy nastily form the stairs. "You changed it. I've never seen that before. I can't understand what he's saying either."

"What?!"

"What?" Darius looked at them. "What are you all saying?"

The malachite eyes were on Darius. "Fascinating. A servant who can only hear and speak to his master. We will have to remember that one. "

“Undo it!”

“Even we cannot, nor can any follower of the Gathas. Only you can. Your mind is now the key that has locked this cipher. You have the power, the intelligence and the ability, but you do not possess the knowledge. We have that knowledge. It looks like our association will begin more smoothly and more interestingly than predicted.”

Ryou let his senses brush what was in Darius's mind. How could it filter out all signals except those from Ryou alone? What the hell had he done?! That just didn't make sense, words were words, whoever spoke them. Unless - unless-...Ryou hadn't been speaking Japanese for months, he’d been using this meta-language that came with the Gift. He doubted it had a grammar or anything so mundane, it was too pure for that, like mathematical equations used to represent words. That meant that there might be some factor he was adding that was unique to himself, an identifier as distinctive as his tone of voice if speaking Japanese- forget it, it was all speculation. What mattered was fixing it. If he could...

Ryou tried to touch the alien layer in Darius's mind, perhaps get rid of it entirely. But he didn't have a clue where to start. He pried at it, but he had so little control over his powers, it was like trying to unglue molecules with his fingers. Ryou could feel the thin dead air rush in and out of his mouth as he panted in effort, but he couldn't get anywhere. The more he tried, the harder it got to even see it properly. Ryou stopped, afraid of making the situation worse. He looked helplessly at his lover. Darius was frowning in bewilderment. 

Ryou pushed his glasses up, ran his fingers over his face - still human, and hopefully unreadable - and turned to face the Ancient. "What is this Journey you talked about, if I join you?"

"Ryou, no," hissed Darius.

"The Journey has started. Indeed, you have already traveled quite a way,” said the Old thing with fossilized humor. “Right now you are blinded by flesh. You do not perceive the difference between it and your five other selves. We will show you. You will learn to journey out with your Ba into the world of Ma'at and beyond, into the world of the Gods. Their servants stand guard at the entrance of their lands to kill those who walk the fields of wheat and honey without being of the chosen. But you will not fear them, for we will put our mark on your Sheut, and on your Ba you will bear a holy sign: the Symbol of Amun, of that which is hidden. It will shield you from the dangers of our journey beyond Ma'at. With knowledge, it will even allow you to control those minor deities that the Old Gods give us dominion over, such as the shadows behind you now. You will become one of us, beholden to us, and you will forget in time the world of your clay Ha."

The words didn't make much sense. Ryou listened to their meaning, to the echoes behind the whisper that suggested that this voice wasn't speaking in Japanese either, and that maybe some greater meaning could be captured directly from what Ryou was hearing. There were worrisome impressions in those echoes. These guardians...the Ancient priest meant creatures that stood at the limit between three dimensions and beyond. Maybe even creatures from those higher dimensions. Some of those, the more powerful or the strangest ones, were probably what these illuminated lunatics called their Old Gods. Others could actually be controlled, such as those animating the statues. These extra-planar creatures were only partly here, this homogeneous substance like rock was merely their protrusion into this world. Like clay packed into a mold of the maker's choosing, but clay with willpower, with the ability to move, and at the sculptor's beck and call it seemed. If all that wasn't enough to be unpalatable, Ryou had the feeling there was something else the Ancient was not telling him. It wasn't so much his Magian instincts as his common sense, which was considerably better honed. 

"If I agree-" Ryou put up a hand to forestall Darius’s objections. "If I accept to join you, what means do you have to insure I follow your interests?"

"Once you've joined us, you will no longer ask that question," was the whisper behind his left ear. "We are beyond men. We are nearer the deities than we are to these barbarians. Our interests will naturally coincide."

'Naturally' my ass, thought Ryou. This bastard had mentioned earlier that Haaskoning had let Ryou wander around without his own 'mark on his Sheut'. Ryou was ready to bet that this mark was going to reinforce Ryou's decision as to which camp he belonged to. In this conflict between Ancients and Per Gathas, there would be no spies and no traitors...But at this point, the choice of action was stark. 

Ryou looked at Darius. “I'm sorry.”

“No!” Darius snarled, grabbing Ryou by the arm as if to physically restrain him from this Journey.

“I didn't know what I was doing when I changed his spell on you. If I don't learn how to fix this, it seems you won't be able to understand anybody else.”

“I don't care!”

“I know, but...Darius, fighting this man is going to get us killed.” 

Darius gave the Ancient One a vile look. “I can think of worse things.”

“So can I.”

Darius's eyes widened as he caught Ryou's meaning, as well as the flick of a glance towards the place through which they'd come in.

Without a second of hesitation, Darius hurled himself at the statue behind them, coming in low like the excellent wrestler he was. It was more a football type tackle than an attempt to fight the thing formally, though, and it bore more fruit. Ryou could feel the will animating the statue, he saw its hands leap out like clubs- but it wasn't quick enough to catch its balance on its stone legs, and Darius's shove at hip-height sent it crashing over backwards. Ryou shot past it without looking to see if it would break. Other statues moved up ahead, as clunky as robots, but they weren’t all that fast. There was a gap, and Ryou made for it with all the speed he could muster. Darius was a second behind him, the time to scoop up his weapon. Neither of them looked back at the Ancient one. That was not something one could fight physically. Mentally...Ryou was going to do his damned best, his mind rifling through everything he'd learned from 'Useages', yes, even those bloody useless cantrips, anything that would keep the Ancient One from attacking them from a direction they could not defend from.

They burst out into sunlight, tearing a tapestry off its ropes. Ryou was concentrating hard on anything that might attack them in the higher planes- a little too hard, he barreled right into a set of arms that closed around him like a trap. He shouted in shock. It was not the hardened stone arms of a statue. He caught a glimpse of a dog-like snout over his shoulder. His mind caught a glimpse of something even more grotesque. 

Then Darius punched the creature in the face with the strength of a jackhammer. It went over backwards, taking Ryou with it. Ryou scrambled to his feet. Darius was in front of him now, sword swinging at another of the dog-faced creatures. They were clothed in white tunics, not as dirty as the one in Palis. These were well-kept slaves. But slaves nonetheless, with chains that went all the way into their heads.

The sword cut the creature down the chest as it leaped at Darius, and it fell with a scream that was as human as its warped features would allow. Ryou felt a distant urge to throw up as it watched the eyes that might have once been those of a woman's stare frantically around as it yammered. His mind set aside the horror for now, pooling all his resources into escaping. 

"You know you will not get far that way," said the Ancient one. 

Ryou's head whipped this way and that, before he spun around. The creature was still standing by the fallen statue of the cow-headed man, but that whisper came from right behind Ryou's ear. 

"Darius-"

"Just run," Darius growled, even though he must also have seen what Ryou had seen at the foot of the ziggurat. 

They made their way down the stairs as fast as they could without killing themselves, but they could have taken their time. Nobody followed them. There was no need.

Darius stopped abruptly, throwing up his arm to catch Ryou and make sure he did not stumble headlong into nothingness.

The ziggurat and its paved esplanade were now, as far as the eye was concerned, floating in the sky. Ryou could see no ground down below. Neither could he see sun or clouds or anything. The sky was a pale blur with nothing but the titanic creature floating there like a beached moon.

"You cannot escape this place." The whisper had followed them. "This is my Kingdom beneath the eye of the Old God. Not the mightiest of the Per Gathas could come or go unless I gave them leave to."

"Shut up," muttered Ryou. 

They stood side by side, panting, staring down into the void. Then Darius untied his scabbard from his belt, held it out over the edge of the masonry and dropped it. They watched it fall until it was too small to see anymore.

"If that's an illusion, it's a good one." 

"If it's an illusion, then we are dead," Ryou said grimly.

"Huh?"

"We're going to have to jump," said Ryou, and couldn't quite believe he'd said that even when the words hung in the dead air around him. "If the stairs are there, or the side of the mountain, we’ll fall down it and break our necks. If it's not a mirage...then we'll fall, and that will give me both some time and a spatial anomaly to work with. I might be able to get us back. Maybe. I think I need the jump, though, especially for this. I've always been in motion when I crossed to another plane before. But..." Ryou took a deep breath and released it, shoving up his glasses and looking away from the void and over to his lover. "Here's the facts. I have no idea if I can do it, or what I need to do. Even if I do have the time to figure it out before we hit anything, and I get us back, I can't guarantee we won't fall with the same velocity when we get back to Assyria. We might get back there and die from impact. And that’s assuming we get back at all, which is probably going to take a miracle."

"Take us back to my homeland," said Darius with deliberation, looking at the drop and then at Ryou. "Take us back, and if we die, they will bury us side by side like heroes and brothers, and it will always be a cleaner death than what awaits us here."

"Okay." Ryou looked down at the dizzying drop, then looked up again, clearing his throat that'd gone tight. "Darius, just so you know, _he_ has knowledge that makes me look like a little baby, and he's persuaded that I can't do it."

"Yeah, well he might have a head full of lore, but he doesn't know either of us if he thought we'd accept that cockheaded offer he dragged us here to hear," Darius shot back. "If he doesn’t know you that well, he cannot say what you can or cannot do. What you're not going to do, however, is turn back and become that man's puppet in order to bargain for our safety. I will shove you off this thing and jump myself before you even think of it."

“Thanks,” Ryou said, a smile tugging at his features. “Well, since we’re down to holy intervention on the one hand and certain death on the other...as my countrymen would say, our fate hangs on the divine wind.”

“Sounds good. Let it carry us home.”

Darius's hand was in his own. Ryou squeezed it and stepped off of the edge.


	5. Chapter 5

The first minute was the worst. After that, Ryou sort of got used to it.

It only felt like they were falling while the ziggurat was still visible. Once it'd disappeared, swallowed up by the odd light of what was probably not sky, the lack of reference made speed hard to judge. There was only a little wind blowing past them. The air resembled old dry felt. Silence muffled everything in Ryou's ears except for the clicking of the disks in his lover's hair, and if there was a sound to hear before he died, he wouldn't mind it being that one.

Once it was obvious they weren't going to dash their brains out on invisible stairs, Darius pulled Ryou towards him. He grasped him by the forearm, and forced Ryou's tense fingers to grip the strap of Darius’s bracer, holding them fast together, all without a word. In Ryou’s opinion, Darius was doing really well for someone who did not have any kind of mental preparation for this sort of thing, no films of cosmonauts in his childhood, no Alice in Wonderland...Then again, Darius was not a rational man of the twenty-first century who was used to understanding and controlling most aspects of his life. So many things in his world were magical forces beyond his control, from plagues and landslides to the arts of priests and magi. Faced with something beyond his comprehension, he didn’t seek to analyse or grapple it; he simply put his trust in his Gods to keep them safe, and in Ryou to get them out of there. Ryou, for his part, was going to do his damned best. First item on the agenda: break out of this damned world before they found out in a rather terminal way that it did have a bottom after all.

Ryou reached out with his senses. And pulled back immediately. Ugh! This place was even more screwed up than he'd initially thought. 

"It's like...like we're in a bubble.” Ryou’s words sounded way too loud in the odd atmosphere. “Or rather some kind of higher-dimensional loop." 

"Are we still falling?" Darius asked. "I can't feel any wind anymore."

"We are, but at only half the speed, and we’re still slowing. I don't know what he did to physics here. This whole place is his plaything."

"Is there a ground?" 

"No. Yes, in a way. The ziggurat. It's at the center of everything, we're falling towards it." Ryou could see it, a speck in the distance. Darius, with his weakened eyesight, would not be able to spot it yet.

"...What?" Darius asked, confounded. "But that’s where we’re falling _from_. How is that possible?"

"Don't ask. Damn it, we've got no more speed than we had when we first arrived here. We're going to be no more than bruised for our efforts. I thought he let us get away a little too easily."

Darius didn't ask any further questions. He just gripped his sword in his free hand, a grim look on his face. There were things down there he could fight, he was going to set his sights on that. 

But the Ancient priest did not care if his servants were cut down. He could take more humans and warp their bodies and minds to do his bidding. There was only one enemy down there, and if Darius and Ryou attacked him, he'd do _that_ to Darius again, and maybe to Ryou as well. Yeah, a few minutes of that mental torture and Ryou would be ready to sign away his soul, or else his mind would snap-

No. 

No, that was not what was going to happen.

Ryou's thoughts suddenly became very calm, very focused. He was not going to play the rat in that creature's little maze, he was not going to let the Ancient relic sink claws into his soul, and he was never going to let that bastard near Darius again. 

Darius gasped; his sword had shot out of his hand as if jerked. It tumbled down (assuming that word had meaning here), turning over and over lazily in the thin, dead air. 

"What-...did we stop?"

Ryou did not answer. His mind had clawed a foothold into this plane. No more senseless falling. 

The Ancient one said nothing, though Ryou was pretty sure the creature could talk to them even now, from somewhere right behind them. The whole dimension reeked of his mind, his power. He was amused. He was not going to interfere. He was going to wait with the patience of crocodiles for Ryou to tire himself out and give up. But that was not going to happen. 

Ryou was aware that he was not likely to make it out of here intact. The cold, lifeless air flowing through his lungs could very well be counting down towards his last gasp. How many more heartbeats until the end, how many more breaths? Ten, nine, eight- His body had rarely felt this _real_ and valued, and also this fragile, but it was his mind that mattered. Thoughts of his family, his former life flashed through his thoughts but did not disturb the stillness of his concentration, the solidity of his resolve. He was going to break out of here. That was what he had set his mind to do. If they arrived back in the Outlands dead, well, so be it; at least he wanted a shot at getting Darius back safe, and if not safe, somewhere where their bodies would rest in real earth. 

\- five breaths, four, three-

There it was. This twisted coil of a dimension could not be perfectly hermetical, not if Ryou and Darius had entered, as well as presumably that nameless kid and the servants and whatever food they required. There was an exit to it, not in any physical direction, but in the direction of the upper planes. It stretched away like an umbilical cord, away from this weird place and the massive entity in the sky, all the way back to the Outlands. Where in the Outlands...did not matter.

Darius made an involuntary noise in his throat as their bodies jerked, picking up speed again, as much acceleration as Ryou could pull out of his hat when the only gravimetric object around here was the ziggurat. Then again, the Ancient cheated with gravity so Ryou was damn well going to cheat too, and being in motion would help with the transition from this insane asylum back to normal space. 

\- two one- 

There was a flicker of baffled rage at the edge of Ryou’s perception, an indrawn breath right next to his ear-

Ryou reached out towards the dimensional membrane and ripped through.

 

 

Nothing but the purest concentration kept Ryou’s mind from snapping like glass.

The transition only lasted the time of a flicker of a thought, but in that time Ryou’s brain would have ended up smeared across the dimensions like butter spread over too many layers of toast under the influence of a bombardment of information, if he had not been focusing solely and exclusively on getting back. 

How to-

Realities coagulated around him in a maelstrom.

\- _where_ -

The Spiral was here, there, everywhere around them, but they were not interfaced with it in any way.

\- where to even _begin_ -

All his previous transitions had been instantaneous, instinctive, cutting straight through the planes randomly. Now – here and now – 

Information piled into Ryou’s mind, all within that same fraction of a second. They were in the Veil, primordial chaos that defied even the basics of reality. In the boil of hypergeometry they had plunged into, there were no bearings, no distances, everything was _here_ and yet not, all at once-...

\- _everything at once_ \- 

Wait, there. There was...a faint trace of a direction, a remnant of a hole that the Ancient had dragged them through. Patched up, but not perfectly, not from this end. It was the beginnings of a Path...and Things crawled around it at the edge of Ryou’s perceptions like interdimensional silverfish disturbed by the sudden appearance of reality beneath their multi-planar rock.

\- They had to –

Ryou and Darius had to get out of here, back to reality, or the acceptable substitute thereof they called the Outlands, as quickly as possible, or the two of them would attract all the wrong kind of attention, and possibly get eaten. 

\- had to get back –

Back yes, back to Assyria. He’d only lived there a month, but Ryou suddenly missed it so much, raw cricket-strident sunshine, wind in the barley, marketplace shouts, goats bleating, Darius’s smile early in the morning as he let the dogs out to run-

\- _There!_

That breath, which might or might not be his last, was still rattling in Ryou’s throat. Darius had not even had time to gasp yet. A tenth of a second had elapsed. Transitions were usually instantaneous, though, and this one, poised over the edge of the abyss of unreality, felt like it’d lasted an eternity already. But now Ryou knew where he had to go. The brittleness of the Veil where the Ancient had hauled them through had given him a direction. His longing had helped him home in on a region of planes that felt familiar. And once he concentrated on that area, something brilliant snagged his attention, as bright to his senses as a flare sent up to guide him home through the night. 

Instinct kicked in, and told him this was the way. His mind reached, ripped through, his body followed.

Transition.

No sound, no great light or rushing tunnel, no special effects at all. But that split second in a space whose mere existence could rip the human mind apart had given way to the next moment in which reality had reasserted itself.

_Shit!_

Information of a more mundane kind - but just as critical – collided into Ryou’s mind. They were back in Assyria, or rather a not-quite-materialized projection thereof. But Ryou and his untrained abilities had flubbed their re-entry; he could see the ground, real and solid, but it was in motion relative to them, rotating some twenty meters below their feet. The bright ‘light’ which had caught Ryou’s attention was even brighter this close, though it only existed out here in this superfluous dimension, and only a magian would have the senses to see it. It was burning over Mooncrest, lighting the way to the Circle, that area of stelae where reality and chaos meshed in a controllable way, a place where a magian could arrive safely. Ryou could sense it clearly as he overshot it by quite a distance.

With a ‘plop’ which existed only in Ryou’s mind, the two of them pierced the thin membrane that surrounded the ordinary three dimensions. The attributes of normality leapt on them like a pack of hounds, gravity chief amongst them. They were falling. They’d rematerialized too high and still in motion, at a diagonal towards the rushing earth below. 

That last breath burst out of Ryou’s mouth. _We’re going to die-_

What hit him felt as soft as concrete, but since it was water, it parted before his skidding, plunging body, cushioning him a bit. 

Ryou’s mind hit reality with a similar thud, higher senses like a bird negotiating complex air currents before running itself into the side of a tree. Goodbye flight, motion, fluid possibilities carrying him; hello overly solid reality. Ryou went limp, unable to move his clay-like body or even comprehend what was happening to him. Nothing but instinct urged him to avoid trying to breathe while underwater, though Ryou was too dazed to figure out why that would be a bad idea right this moment. 

The water dragged at him, and he could feel himself drift to a stop. Ryou twitched. The effort to hold his breath became conscious. He lifted his head, felt his hair float around him. Opened his eyes, but the water was too silty, he could barely see more than dim flickers. 

His arms, which had been clamped around his head to protect it from what had seemed an inevitable crash, floated free in the water. What a surreal feeling, having to use his limbs to move. Try to, rather. So tired...Felt like this before...When arriving in the Broken Lands...

The murky water...it was lighter in that direction. Much lighter. Ryou blinked in the water. The surface? Where? Could it be that close? Ryou thrashed weakly, and his foot sank into something soft and glutinous. Mud. So did his flailing hand a second later. Bottom, he’d touched the bottom. But he did not have the strength to capitalize on that contact. He couldn’t push his heavy body, weighed down by his riding clothes, up through the water towards the sunlight flickering above, so close. There was a lack of pressure of the water holding him down that told him he was at no great depth. Ryou’s eyes were fastened on the light shining through the silt. It was bright. It wasn’t that far away. Just...not getting any closer. 

His body was screaming at him. He’d had the breath knocked out of him on arrival, he didn’t have anything in his lungs as it were. His vision was getting splotchy, and the way his larynx was spasming, it was soon going to open and draw that final, drowning breath whatever Ryou’s rational mind had to say on the matter. Ryou realized, with a fury quite unlike him, that after surviving death in countless bizarre, horrendous ways since this morning, he was going to drown in what could be no more than five feet of water. Damn it, if only he could just _stand_! 

But he could barely twitch. His eardrums were burning, his eyeballs felt like they were going to pop, his throat was being squeezed by a giant hand, and in the far distance he was sure the Ancient One was laughing himself sick. 

Then...

His fading senses didn’t catch the details, just that something odd was happening to his body. It seemed to be moving. He was being gripped around the waist and chest, something hard pressed into his back.

Ryou’s head broke surface. 

He coughed, water cascading from his mouth. It closed over his head again. Panic rushed through him- but it was just a thin wave that’d lapped over him. His feet were dragging uselessly in the mud, but something – someone – was supporting him.

“Easy. Got you.”

Darius. It was Darius... 

Air rushed in and out of Ryou’s raw lungs. He started coughing and he couldn’t stop. He’d inhaled some water as he was fading. Fortunately he was too weak to struggle, too weak to help Darius and probably hinder him in the process. At first Darius was swimming awkwardly, hauling them both, but soon there must have been enough mud beneath his sandals for him to get a foothold. His advance became half swimming, half pushing himself along. Ryou opened his eyes, which ached just as much as the rest of him. He could hardly see anything through the droplets of water that speckled his glasses. From the corner of his eye, the edge of the river was still quite some distance away.

Timelapse, a moment of darkness. Ryou blinked fuzzily at the reed swaying beneath his nose. When...had they gotten to the bank...? He must have drifted off. Darius was grunting with effort as he tried to drag Ryou through hip-deep mud, water, vegetation and bugs, which was the hallmark of the banks of the river Taibor a few weeks after the flood season. 

After what felt like hours, Ryou was lying on firm ground, on a grassy knoll rising above the reeds and water lilies and lotus plants. It didn’t seem real...Was that it? Had they made it? Had they actually both miraculously survived that? Or was this going to turn out to be some kind of massive delusion, maybe some trick by the Ancient to break their spirit...?

Ryou turned his head, or rather let it flop to one side. Darius was sitting beside him, arms hanging limply over his knees as he took deep breaths, recovering from the effort of dragging them both out of the marshy Taibor. Then he lifted his head, looked around and then down at Ryou.

“Ryou? How do you feel? Injured anywhere?”

The question was prosaic. So was the mud that caked Ryou’s lover from head to toe, making a mess of his hair which was going to take ages to clean out. The sight and sound of him was a tonic, a solid shot of certainty. Yes, they had made it out, they’d both survived, the Ancient One could sit in his made-up dimension and _spin_ on it, and all things considered, the answer to Darius’s question was “I feel amazing”. 

Ryou cleared his raw throat. The drying mud on his face cracked as he moved his lips. “Uh...I’m fine, pretty much. You’re filthy.”

Darius gave him that wild, free grin that’d dragged Ryou across the dimensions so long ago. “'Fine'. Of course you are. But none too clean either. Should we go back into the river to wash off, do you think? The crocodiles somehow missed us the first time around.”

“That’s okay. Uh...should we move?” Ryou didn’t feel like moving – didn’t think he could move – but the Taibor did have its share of crocodiles, hippos and other aquatic and semi-aquatic threats. 

“The servants of the river are all too fat on carcases from the receding floods to bother with us,” said Darius, getting to his feet with a grunt. “There’s some sort of path nearby, on that bank over there. Ryou, you look like you’re about to go to sleep and I don’t blame you, but before you do, am I insane, or is this the Taibor I’ve known my whole life?”

“Huh?”

“Are we really in Assyria?”

“Oh, yes, yes we are.” Ryou looked up at the sky, ignoring the smudges on his glasses. It was turquoise with a few tiny clouds very high up. Ryou was not subject to fits of poetry, but if he had been, he’d be ready to say that shade of blue up there was the most beautiful shade of blue there ever was. And clouds. He’d never appreciated clouds to their true worth before. As for the solidity of the earth beneath his shoulder blades, he really would have to be a poet to describe it, and just what it meant to him right now.

At the periphery of his vision, he could see Darius look around slowly. “How did you manage...? Never mind. Well, if this is the Taibor, and that island way over there is Mooncrest, then I know where that path over there leads. Hmph, a bit more wading through this muddy shit to get there, but hell, after what we’ve been through...Remind me to sacrifice ten calves to whatever deity you think most appropriate, and to never complain about my traveling conditions ever again. Not even the desert of Zeon could rival that...Ei, it seems like a bad dream already. Maybe it was. Ryou...? Hey, Ryou?” 

But Ryou’s eyes were closed, darkness covering him, the wonderfully solid ground beneath him as comfortable and reassuring as a cradle.

 

 

Ryou had his usual sudden surge into awareness that made him envy people whose gentle transitions to consciousness reintroduced them progressively to their worries. Instead, the past few hours jumped out at him like a mugger, along with all the bodily signals to inform him that he was nowhere near as comfortable as when he’d drifted off. 

He was half draped, half tied onto someone’s back. Darius, of course; Ryou recognized the dark mud-caked hair in his field of vision as his eyes opened, the clink of disks near his ear.

“Whu-...” Ryou lifted his head. His body was at least responding to him now. He cleared his throat and blinked muzzily, trying to focus. “Where are we...? Why...?”

“Welcome back,” said Darius. “You’ve been asleep awhile, or so says the sun.” He was walking with a firm soldierly stride. Each step forced Ryou’s thighs into the leather of a carrying harness, improvised out of both their belts. Ryou wondered how he could have slept through it all, including the discomfort of being carried like this. Darius’s voice was too loud near his ear. His head was aching, the bright Assyrian sunlight drilling into his eyes.

Ryou cleared his throat again. His voice was hoarse. “Why are you carrying me?” 

“I didn’t have enough wood for a travois.”

“...uh...you could have left me back there. Gone to get help.”

Darius just snorted.

Ryou looked around. They were walking on a stone-paved road, wide and well kept. His sluggish mind finally clicked. “We’re going to Sura?”

“Yes. By the time we made it around the bend of the river, it was not that much further than going back to Mooncrest. Well, I exaggerate. It’ll take us another hour this way, but I don’t really feel like crossing a line of stelae any time soon. Not while you’re not awake, at any rate. I was hoping to get a ride to Sura, actually. We’ve been passed by two mule trains since we started along the main road. But the drivers didn't recognize me - why should they, under all this filth? - and I couldn't make them understand me,” Darius said simply.

Ryou’s eyes closed. “Oh god, the language thing. I'm sorry...”

Darius’s shrug jogged him out of his guilt-trip. Ryou could feel the gesture across his entire upper body, it said clearer than words, ‘We’ll worry about that when we get to it.’ 

Ryou forced himself to push it from his mind as well, and focus on the here and now. “Darius, I’m awake now. Put me down. I can...”

“Yeah?” Darius’s head turned towards him in profile. “You can what? Walk? I bet you gold eagles against a crow’s feather that you’ll manage three paces and have to sit down again.”

“You can’t carry me all the way to Sura. That’s hours away.”

Darius gave a bark of laughter. “Inder poke him, now he’s insulting me. Don’t worry so much, magian. We made it back against all odds thanks to you. Damn, we must be the first two men in history to be able to claim to have escaped that! Not counting demi-gods and such. We're back in Assyria, the day is clear but not too hot, and if I cannot carry a wounded comrade for the half day it will take us to walk to Sura’s gates, I don't deserve to keep my command. So what is there to worry about?”

“Nothing, when you put it that way,” Ryou had to admit with a defeated smile. “But can I point out that somebody is coming up behind us, and that _I_ can talk to them and send for help? Unless you really wanted to walk the whole way.”

“No, that’s okay,” said Darius, doing something to the belt arrangement that let Ryou slide down. 

Ryou took a couple of tottering steps across the road to get rid of the pins and needles. His body ached, and still felt bulky and sluggish, like a bird with its wings clipped. Darius was right, he’d not be able to walk very far. He glanced up tiredly towards the approaching rider. The man was obligingly hoofing it towards them at a fast clip, bouncing up and down on the mule’s back as it trotted. 

“Inder’s personally mad at me for letting go of my sword back there, I’m sure,” Darius said, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun and the other casually drawing his belt knife.

“What’s the matter?” Ryou asked, befuddled, as alarm pricked his overtaxed system.

“That’s no casual rider heading to Sura on his own business. From the way that mule is going, I’d say he kicked her as soon as he saw us, which makes it no prize to guess what he’s after.”

Ryou didn’t know much about mules and their habits, but his eyesight was sharper than Darius. When the approaching rider waved at them, the hood falling from his hair, Ryou recognized him. “It’s that Passer, Andrap.”

Darius did not sheathe his knife. “That man was no simple Passer, and the last thing I wanted to see today was another Fury-ridden magian other than you.”

“He’s on our side,” Ryou pointed out, then corrected himself, “or rather he’s the enemy of those Ancient Ones, and on the side of the Per Gathas.”

Darius grunted at the distinction.

“Lord Ghan-” Andrap shouted as he closed in on them. “Lord Ryou- I felt you-“ The jogging of the mule kept interrupting him. He trotted up to them, stopped the sweating animal, and continued as he slipped from the cloth saddle. “I felt you appear, but I was afraid, well, that you’d crashed, that is- ah, I see you landed in the river.”

“Yes, fortunately for us,” Ryou said, looking down at himself. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had a lily pad stuck to his person under the dried, cracked mud.

“It’s a gift, a sacred gift of the Path Maker that you were able to come back at all,” Andrap said, his words falling over each other in amazement. “I had the beacon up for days, but I was sure there was nothing that could be done, that-“

“The beacon? That...burning effect over Mooncrest? You did that?”

“Yes, and we left the breach in the circle open, under the direct order of Blessed Haaskoning himself. He seemed to think you would find your way back,” Andrap said, recovering his breath and composure. “We gave you a guiding light to follow, and shored up the breach as much as we dared. All traffic through Mooncrest has been stopped, of course. Are you both well?”

“...You said...days?”

“What?”

“You said you had the beacon up for _days_?”

“That’s right, you’ve been missing since the day before yesterday. The palace is in an uproar and the King sends us couriers for news twice daily. There are soldiers posted all around Mooncrest – monsters have appeared, attracted by the disturbance. But I left the men back there, I decided to make sure you were the ones who’d come through before I lit a fire beneath them.”

“Ryou? What is he saying?” Darius prompted.

Andrap blinked and gave Darius a more in-depth scrutiny. Then he visibly paled, eyes widening as he took an involuntary step back in horror. Whatever ugly thing was still stuck on Darius’s mind must be considerably more visible to the Per Gathas magian than to Ryou. 

“My...my lord, can you understand me?”

“He can’t,” Ryou said. “He can only understand me.”

“You?” Andrap turned the horrified look on Ryou, and took another step back. This time it had been deliberate, the kind of movement Darius made when he was about to draw his sword. Ryou quickly held up his hands, then even more quickly put them down again when Andrap’s gaze leapt to them.

“It was an accident, an accident. We were attacked, they did something to him, I tried to fix it and it’s...like this now. Then we escaped and came back here.” 

Andrap stared hard into Ryou’s eyes. Ryou could feel that the scrutiny was passing over more than his features. He stayed as passive and as open as he could. Let the Son of Zaratusra see there was no weird mark on Ryou’s ‘Ba’ or whatever, everything on the level. The summit of irony would be for Ryou to get zapped by Andrap now because the latter thought he’d converted to the cause of the Ancient Ones. 

“I see,” Andrap finally said, the tension leaving his frame. Though he was still cautious, and so was Darius, who’d missed nothing of the subtext even if he could not understand the words. He still hadn’t sheathed his knife. Ryou rubbed his face. Billion-dollar discussions over UST’s business luncheons had never been this fraught.

“Can you remove what was done to him?” he asked Andrap.

Andrap gave the subject of their concern a hopeless look that gave both Ryou and Darius their answer before the magian even opened his mouth. “I...will have to look into it. Not right here, no.”

“Well, let’s get going.” Ryou turned towards the road again, but was stopped by Darius’s hand on his shoulder.

“Hold up.”

“Darius, he says he can’t fix it here.” Ryou refused to dwell on the thought that Andrap would not be able to fix it at all. 

“So we go back to Sura, but we do this the smart way,” said Darius in the voice of the army commander and strategist. 

 

 

Leyam drank down the first two cups of wine with the air of a man who really needed them. Standing right behind the king’s decorated ivory chair, Rand held the pitcher as if he’d forgotten he still had it in his hands. Nicodeme, the only other person of Leyam’s court present, was sitting on a pillow at Leyam’s feet, looking his age for once as he hugged his knees and tried not to stare too obviously at the source of everyone’s concern. The size and the complexity of the issue hung over them like a deep, dark storm cloud.

“Did any of the knot-heads traveling with us think to get my horse out after we were attacked?” said Darius suddenly. His voice jarred the silence, so much more so for the men to whom his voice would be chopped up nonsense. Nicodeme flinched and looked away quickly. There was concern but also superstitious fear in his eyes, a fear which his elders were just better at hiding. For Ryou, the thing affecting Darius’s mind had a logic to it, like the Gift of Zaratusra and other magian elements he’d been getting used to. For these men from antiquity, it was raw magic, a force they were as helpless before as any other natural disaster. Andrap referring to the effect as a curse after thirty futile minutes of trying to lift it hadn’t helped. 

Leyam gazed fixedly at his brother, then looked reluctantly at Ryou. “What did he say?”

“Um...”

“It was a bloody expensive horse,” said Darius moodily before shooting back his beer.

“They won’t know, Darius. I’ll ask Dio about it later.” Once the Ionian had calmed down a bit and stopped praying out loud to his deities to remove the blight that was affecting his leader. Ryou was rather glad the man had stayed out in the king’s private courtyard with Darius’s puzzled dogs. 

Leyam motioned Rand to pour him a third drink. “I’m glad the mutt had the instinct to slink in by the back door, even if they tinkered with his ability to speak.”

“What did he say?” asked Darius, looking over at Ryou. 

Ryou took a good swallow of his own wine, wishing it were cognac. “He’s glad you sent Andrap to fetch Dio discreetly and smuggle us into the city.” 

“What did he think I was going to do? March in blowing trumpets and then stand on the Temple Plaza to declaim poetry?”

“What did he say?” asked Leyam.

“That it seemed natural to keep this to ourselves until we’d sorted it out,” said Ryou, rubbing his forehead. He was getting tired of translator duties, and it wasn’t that long since Andrap had finally given up on trying to reverse the ‘curse’ and left them to let Ryou bring an alarmed Leyam up to speed.

“Ryou...do you trust that Per Gathas henchman who accompanied you?” Leyam asked slowly, looking out the large window. 

“He helped us so far.” Ryou had been loath to leave Darius, unable to communicate, on his own on the side of the road to Sura, so it was Andrap who’d ridden the mule to the palace, gotten hold of Dionysodoros and discreetly showed him Darius’s arm brace, as surefire an identifier to someone who knew him as a passport. Dio had come alone with two horses and cloaks as instructed. The four of them had ridden in discreetly, or as discreetly as they could when it was immediately apparent to the guards on the gates that they were trying to hide something. Dionysodoros, as one of Ghan’s personal guards, had gotten them through the checkpoint without being searched. There would certainly be speculation over half the city by now, but at least nobody other than Dio and the men in this room had seen Darius in his present condition. “Andrap is still helping us. He’s patrolling the palace, making sure none of the Ancient Ones can take another stab at us while we’re here.”

“Ah, yes, these Ancient Ones.” Leyam gave a smile as glittery as a knife. “The Egyptians, now. As if the Romans were not enough. So, do you trust him when he says he cannot lift this curse from my brother?”

“I’ve got no choice but to believe him. It’s not just his word. The creature who did this to Darius said the same thing. Nobody from the Per Gathas can undo it. Only I can.”

“Except you can’t either, from what you said.”

“No. I can’t. Not yet.” Ryou looked at Darius, lost in a strange land that was his home. “That’s why I’m going to go to Asha Mainyu.”

“Like hell you are!” Darius immediately snapped. 

“Darius, it’s the only way-“

“You’ll slip the noose of the Ancients and walk right into the one of the Gathas.”

“What choice do we have?”

“Better ones than that, I should hope. Leyam-“ Darius gripped his armrests in frustration, staring at his brother.

Leyam didn’t ask for a translation, Ryou’s side of the conversation was enough. He made a ‘calm down’ gesture directed at his brother, and eyed Ryou. “My brother objects, that much is obvious. As for my own part, I have a practical concern. How would you get there?”

“Get there? If I go to the Moon-...Oh.”

“Yes, exactly. The City Council has been getting quite _democratic_ with me these past two days, bitching about the closure of our trade’s lifeline. I had to threaten to have them and their families flayed a few times before they remembered this is not a Greek city state. Now that you’re back, I’m hoping the Per Gathas will reopen the Mooncrest circle, but I doubt you or Darius would be safe taking that.”

“...You’re right. But I have to do something.”

“We are going to do something.” Leyam tilted his head back and looked blindly at some satyr doing an unspeakable act to a painted goat up on the ceiling frieze. “To start with, as the blood of Kings in the line of Paxalmetes-Sirrian the Great, descendant of Ashur himself, I shall make a personal request to the gods for their intervention, with all the appropriate sacrifices.”

“Um...” Ryou rubbed his forehead. Now was not a good time to bring up that conversation about atheism he’d not yet had with Leyam. It probably would never be a good time, not in Assyria or anywhere in the Pariya region. 

“The sacrifices are already well under way. They’ve been going at it since those numbskulls that were supposed to guard you all came clattering back to Sura, shouting out that their Lord was missing _again_ , and getting the whole town in an uproar. You can see the smoke over half the city. And if that doesn’t work...”

“Yes?”

“Then we’ll wait.”

“Wait?! What for?”

“For our enemies and the enemy of our enemies to start wondering what we’re up to,” said Leyam with a nasty grin on his painted lips. “And it will give me time to prepare myself to do something I really do not want to do. Something none of the Kings of my line have ever been very good at.”

“Which is?” asked Ryou, alarmed at the way the grin had turned sour.

“Giving up an acquired advantage. Hell, the father of my father’s father burned the whole city of Kunarkardam to the ground rather than let King Maxelem of Aksum have it, even though they were too far-flung to be of any use to us. In this instance, I’m going to have to give up the last of my leverage on the Per Gathas when I go to them to request a favor. Damn, but I did so enjoy having some means of pressure on the smug bastards, however slight. Especially now that I’ve got a notion of the enemy I am facing and the stakes on the table. Bah, why keep a good card if not to play it? Cassius did that with me, and look what that got him, hmm? Rand, go fetch that Andrap fellow. You and I are going to have a long talk with him to start with. Get him sweating a little. But before we send him off to his masters with a plea for help...we will wait. I should say six days, until after the Feast of Mah, don’t you think, Rand?”

“That long, my King?” Rand asked, eyes flickering towards Darius. Even he could not hide how uncomfortable he was with this situation. 

“Come, come, Rand, I know my brother is unable to sit still for more than a day, but you should know better. Patience has been our greatest weapon before. I know it is painful to see the cur unable to bark, but really we should be enjoying this gods given silence and the aura of diplomacy and civility that will surely invade our court as a result.”

“Pst, Ryou? What did he say?”

“...I’ll tell you later, Darius,” said Ryou tiredly, ignoring Leyam’s snicker.


	6. Chapter 6

Haaskoning jabbed a finger at thin air. "There, that's the crucial bit right there, do you see it?" 

Ryou frowned around a growing stress headache. 

"Don't try so hard. You're tensing up again."

I’m sorry if I find performing brain surgery on my boyfriend a little nerve-wracking, Ryou internally snarled. Outwardly he showed nothing, and forced himself to relax. He craned his neck against the knot forming there, and as an afterthought cracked open an eyelid. Darius sat in his low chair, one leg crossed over his knee, looking relaxed. Though what Ryou and Haaskoning were doing was potentially dangerous, it was painless to the subject. In fact bar a bout of dizziness and one instance of 'whoa, weird stuff happening to my vision’, Darius was completely unaware of what the two magian were doing to his mind at a level beyond his perception, and was now getting heartily bored. The procedure had been going on for over an hour. It was exhausting, but Ryou was gaining a treasure trove of knowledge about the gift of Zaratusra and its applications as a tool of translation and as a weapon.

"Okay, there. You need to do this," Haaskoning said. In the mind’s eye, the magian’s focus shifted from one aspect of the problem to another, illustrating what he meant without interfering with the spell himself. At the same time he was gesturing again, poking at an empty spot two inches above Darius's head as if there was something there. Ryou found the mannerism distracting. He himself was sitting on the chair opposite his lover, with his hands drawn into his lap. This gesturing was useless, and Ryou resented its implication that what they were doing was somehow connected to anything physical. That was a ridiculous and misleading notion. What they were manipulating did not have an existence in terms a human mind could fully comprehend. Gesturing about it was like using one’s hands to describe the binding of oxygen and hydrogen atoms in water. Ryou's chemistry teacher back in school used to do that too and it had driven young Ryou up the wall. 

Ryou felt about with his magian senses. In his imagination, Darius's mind was a three dimensional puzzle, and this fake Gift was locked onto certain parts of it. Ryou tried to ignore the image the same way he ignored Haaskoning's finger-twiddling as being irrelevant and not up to the task of adequately representing something outside the physical plane entirely. 

What he had to do was feel. Feel which parts were Darius’s senses, his door to the world, and which parts had been artificially forced over them, distorting their signals to the point that Darius could not even read or write words anymore, as well as understand his native language or speak it. Ryou had to map out the limits of these additions, their connections to Darius’s mind, and find the key that could unlock them. And then he had to take them and gently...ever so gently...

Haaskoning’s voice had sunk to a whisper. "There. And there. You've got it. And now it's gone."

Darius looked around, chin lifting from where he'd rested it on his fist. "You must have done something, Ryou, because I just understood the old man."

"And the old man can now understand you," said Haaskoning dryly. "Welcome back to the land of communication, Lord Ghan."

Darius gave him a curt nod and glanced at Ryou. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." Ryou picked up a wine glass from the low side table with a hand that was shaking a bit. It was early afternoon in the cool of Leyam’s private quarters, but he was sweating. 

"Stay here and rest," Darius said. "I'll go talk to Leyam. Now that I can." He looked pleased as he got to his feet.

Haaskoning, who’d been tiredly rubbing his eyes, stirred and glanced up. "Ah, Lord Ghan, I did not have time to discuss this with King Leyam, but there are some things I would rather we kept amongst-...ourselves," he finished with a frown, staring at the door Darius had shut firmly behind him.

"In case you haven't figured it out, he's angry with you," said Ryou, leaning back against the low chair rest and closing his eyes.

"...I am sure it was a stressful experience, and I do regret that it took me three days for Andrap’s message to reach me. I was outside Asha Mainyu at the time, attending my duties."

"He's angry because you knew about the Ancients," said Ryou composedly, "and you failed to give us even the slightest word of warning. I'm angry about that too," he added as an afterthought. And yeah, he was also angry about each and every horrid day it had taken Haaskoning to get here, with Darius hiding in Leyam’s apartments, an outcast and a stranger in his own home, unable to even ask for food and drink without Ryou to babysit him.

"Oh? And what should I have told you?"

Ryou cracked open one eye and examined Haaskoning, who looked back without the smallest sign of remorse or embarrassment. 

"That some crazy Egyptian magians could drag us out of the Outlands and to god knows where at the drop of a hat. That would have been a good place to start."

"And if I'd said that, would you have been able to defend yourself?" Haaskoning asked reasonably.

"Well...I could have been better prepared."

"How?"

"...Just knowing about them would have at least put me at a bit less of a disadvantage when I was talking to the creep," said Ryou, since there was little a control freak disliked more than being completely blindsided. "And that's just for starters. If you didn't wind everything up in a cloak of mystery, if you'd prepared me and given me more control over my powers, I would have been able to help Andrap fight off the initial attack. I would have felt what was happening when our kidnapper changed the area around the circle, and if they still managed to get a hold of us, then I could have at least shielded Darius from that mental affliction we finally scrapped just now."

"True, I could have given you much more in the way of knowledge. But then again, what power I would have been handing them if you'd joined them."

Ryou's lips tightened at the memory of that ancient spider frozen at the center of his surreal web. "I would never join those creatures."

"They could have threatened someone close to you."

"They did," Ryou bit out, too tired to care about the import of the admission. 

"Then you are made of stronger metal than most," Haaskoning answered gently without evincing any surprise. "As for giving you a heads-up, I did warn you not to use magic. They would have found you easily that way, as would other things. Your jumping around the dimensions and letting your powers run rife in our Circles is what put their servants on your trail in the first place and helped them locate you."

"Fine, but you could have warned me I was in danger even if I was not going to use my powers."

"I wasn't sure you’d believe me. You could have easily interpreted further warnings as a means of pressuring you into joining my order by waving all kinds of threats over your head," was the dry retort, the accuracy of which left Ryou without much to respond with. 

Haaskoning settled back into his chair with his arms crossed, looking tired. "The reason I am not too concerned about what you’ve told King Leyam, or what Lord Ghan will tell him now, is because I know the king to be a very intelligent man. I am certain he will tell you to not spread any information about all this, if he hasn't already. The people in the Outlands are as a whole very superstitious, and feel helpless in the face of supernatural forces. The average man in the street is not personally affected by the Ancients, no more than any other coterie of powerful schemers, and he would not be able to defend against them if he did. Yet how many dire myths and rumors would spread if they knew about these people? What consequences could this potentially have? Come, you know history, and I’m afraid that one of the sad constants of any human society is their reaction to a fear that cannot find an appropriate target. It will find a scapegoat instead. Hedge wizards, wise women, strangers and even minorities will suddenly look very Egyptian to the man in the street. Travel and trade would also suffer if people knew what lurks within the Veil beyond the circles. No, it may seem unfair to you, but ignorance has its advantages. We have a policy to keep these matters internal to our order as a result. If you'd been willing to join us, you would have learned about them, but you did not seem all that interested, and thus I was constrained by our code. In those circumstances, I did the best I could. I gave you what information I was allowed to on defensive magic, I asked some friends here in Sura to keep an eye on you in case you were contacted by these people under false pretenses, and I also placed Andrap at Mooncrest to watch over you while you crossed the border to another plane."

"He's considerably more than a simple Passer, isn't he.”

"Correct. He is someone who has a lot of experience with these people, these Ancients. I would have placed him at Mooncrest even if you had not been involved, simply to keep an eye on Lord Ghan, who had already been targeted once by these people. Unfortunately both Andrap and I underestimated how much the Ancient order wanted you. I did not think they would be so unsubtle, or take the risk they did. And it was risky, opening a Path of that nature to that land beyond the Veil. It was very risky for you and it was also risky for the magian who performed the maneuvre. I did not expect them to do that."

"Yes, I'm sure it was something of a surprise," said Ryou, watching him closely, eyes narrowed, "and yet somehow I cannot shake off the feeling that I was being used as bait."

Haaskoning glanced at his hands briefly, then he looked Ryou right in the eye and said, "Yes, as a matter of fact you were."

"Fancy that," Ryou muttered.

Haaskoning tilted his head to one side and his gaze went blindly to the window of the king’s quarters as if he were seeing something considerably more sinister than the gardens and the strutting peacocks outside. "These Ancients are our enemies and have been for millennia. What they call Ma'at is a corruption of an ancient Egyptian concept referring to the established order: what most humans think of as reality, as well as the structure of human society and the natural world. Needless to say, the Ancients believe they're at the very top of Ma'at, this natural order, and just one step away from being above it altogether. The magic they use is...powerful, complex and fascinating." The old magian's tone had dropped to almost a whisper with a hint of strong feeling beneath it. "...Truthfully, every single member of my order has at one time or other wished we could have even half the freedom to research, explore and spin wonders as they do. Our code feels constraining to all of us at times. But after looking more closely into their schemes, you quickly realize that some of the explorations and experiments they do would horrify even Assyria's more notorious kings, the ones who'd have the skin of their enemies scraped off with pottery shards. 

“Maybe you can say it is the price they pay for their power: the way they cut themselves away from humanity like everybody else is a lesser creature. Their whole magic, and that Sign of Amun on their minds, as they call it...they are very warped people. And also very narrow-minded. Blind, you could say. Creatures that are merely natural beings, if from another plane than ours, are considered gods by these fools. They just...Everything they do and see, this huge power they have, is twisted and forced into a mold that dates back over three thousand years, and they are unable to even see this to be the case. Because their indoctrination is heavily biased with religious mystery - it's virtually brainwashing - their newer members just become more clones of the Ancient ones that came before them. They can bring very little that is new to the order even if their highest hierarchy are in theory free to experiment and discover as much as they want. They can find new and gruesome ways of using their power, but they can never find a new way to think, to evolve..." 

Ryou took a sip of wine, pondering Haaskoning's words and also the Son of Zaratusra's unexpected flow of information...hopefully this wasn't hiding anything sinister this time, it was just a return for Ryou's complete description of his brush with the Ancients, a story Ryou would have given him anyway in case any small detail might have helped uncurse Darius. Leyam considered Haaskoning’s presence here as a loss of face, as having to give up whatever leverage had been left over the Per Gathas in order to bargain for his brother’s health. Ryou was ready to see it as starting anew on an equal footing, where they could share information against the common enemy they’d now discovered. 

"How come nobody has ever heard about them?" he asked, taking advantage of Haaskoning's unexpected information bonanza. "Everybody I've talked to knows for a fact that the Outland Egyptians were wiped out."

"Invaded, enslaved, and then their country resettled and Romanized ages ago," Haaskoning corrected. "And I don't think the Ancients gave a damn, or else they would have helped their countrymen against the invaders. That is because they had no loyalty to those countrymen, quite the contrary. Their history is complex. When Zoroaster led an enclave of Egyptians to the Outlands, the only ones who were desperate enough to come with Him were the servants of Aten. Amenhotep, known as Akhenaten, the king who'd empowered their religion, had died two decades previously. The followers of his god were being subjugated once more by the priests of the older Egyptian religions. In the refuge of the Outlands, their culture and beliefs flourished. But they had enemies in their midst, priests of the Old Gods who had been entrusted with destroying them from within. These men – no more than a dozen to start with – followed them to the Outlands to pursue what they saw as a sacred task. One of them discovered himself to be a magian, unfortunately. This was a time when the Per Gathas did not even exist, it was Zoroaster and a few disciples alone. Our two orders grew together, if you will. But the ancient priests stayed hidden within the worship of Aten, converting to their cause any priest of Aten who did not have as much faith as he should, as well as any who showed promise of powers over the Veil. 

"It was when the religion of Aten was brought to Rome that the Ancients truly flourished. To this day, their principle players remain hidden within the shadow of the cult of Aten, even though they retain their initial contempt for the Atenites, as well as for the Romans and just about everybody else. The cult of Aten is one of the three central powers of Roma Praetorium, along with the Emperor and the citizens of Rome, as represented by their senate. This gave the Ancients access to a huge empire, and presented them with ways of finding new magians not yet discovered by the Per Gathas. They're very good at seducing people into their ranks with offers of power and freedom that most Outlanders can scarcely imagine. They have no real leaders to their order, they are organized into a loose coalition of members ranked according to their abilities, which grants them great autonomy and influence. Those who have not yet risen above such things can choose to live like great lords, and their vices are given as much license as their experiments." 

Haaskoning held out his palms, fingers wide as if physically giving Ryou the evidence of what he was saying. "I knew you would interest them, and they'd make a gambit for you. I helped you prepare as much as I could, which wasn't much since I had to take into account the fact that you might join them. They have means of persuasion," said Haaskoning in a way that made Ryou not want to question him further on the subject, not when he remembered the way the bodies and psyche of those dog-headed creatures had been twisted by someone else's will. "In fact, you were lucky, oddly enough," Haaskoning added dryly. "If you'd had a run-in with one of their leaders who still live in the Outlands proper, well, it could have been nasty. These people are ruthless and without any mercy whatsoever, and someone used to dealing with normal people would have made sure you were under their power in a prosaic way - chains and manacles - as well as a magical one. But, probably due to the presence of Andrap and others around you, they brought out their big guns for you, and so you ended up confronting their strongest but least flexible magian. Menkaperreseneb tends to think everything will be as he decrees just because he says so."

Ryou blinked. "Meka-who?"

"Menkaperreseneb. That is the name of the man you met, back when such a thing could still be applied to him. Well it's not his original name, I think he's from Hiberia originally, but it's the Ancient name he adopted when he gained his powers. I'm sure he thought you would be so crushed by his presence, and so tempted by his offer, that he never considered you'd try to run away. It certainly never occurred to him that you would be able to leave that place under your own power. Hah, truth be told, I can still scarcely believe it either, but for Menkaperreseneb it would be inconceivable that you could break out of that dimension when he himself cannot."

"He's stuck there?" Ryou asked, surprised, then remembering a brief stir of intuition he’d had back in the higher plane when facing the Ancient Priest.

Haaskoning rubbed his face, looking a little tired still. "It's hard to describe in words- no thank you," he added when Ryou indicated the wine jug and an extra cup, suddenly realizing he'd been an abysmal host to the man who'd helped him heal Darius. "I never drink alcohol, it's discouraged by our beliefs. In these old countries, I cannot tell you how tired I get of explaining that I need well-boiled water with a dash of sugar and vinegar."

“Why sugar and vinegar?" 

“By increasing the acidity of the water, vinegar halts the growth of whatever bacteria survived boiling.” 

“I see. And the sugar?”

"It helps hide the taste of the vinegar," said Haaskoning dryly. "Back home - Asha Mainyu - I usually drink tea, that's quite safe."

That, more than threats or promises of forbidden knowledge, was what Haaskoning should have said awhile back to try to entice Ryou into the Per Gathas. Fortunately the magian leader missed the look of longing that managed to wash across Ryou's tired features for a second.

"So, coming back to my old foe, yes, he is stuck. What those fools call rising above Ma'at is in fact creating a bubble in the higher dimensions that suits their needs, a place subject only to their own ability to mold it with their mind. They do not live there like you and I would understand the term, though. They...pour themselves into a shell they made for themselves there, out of what is left of their physical body. I am not allowed to go into the details of the process as it involves mysteries of high order, plus to tell you the truth it disgusts me profoundly." Haaskoning looked down at his hand, flexed it. "This body they despise so much, this humanity, even our limited life span...Zoroaster taught us to love them and cherish them, not corrupt them and soil them. Ah well, that is what you call a difference of philosophy. The end result of this process is that yes, they can live quite a long time, but they cannot separate themselves from that domain they inhabit. You can imagine what that does to their minds, to live in constant contact with the things, large and small, that you can encounter there."

"Very large," Ryou muttered.

"Yes indeed, that creature you described. I know that one. It’s a calcified colony of smaller organisms, a little like a coral reef that’s beached across several dimensions. To think they believe this thing to be a god...it’s really rather pathetic. Though I rather envy you the chance of having seen it," Haaskoning added, with an apologetic gesture that said he was fully aware Ryou would not share his point of view. "I love to study these extra-dimensional creatures, but I have to concentrate on those that are a danger to men and magian, and I can't spend as much time as I would want to on fascinating fauna that is perfectly harmless and almost entirely out of the reach of someone of even my power. Ah well. To come back to mundane matters, now that I have shared quite a lot of information with you freely and that you understand what you face, I believe you have reconsidered your refusal to join us."

Ryou looked up from the wine glass he was refilling. "Why do you say that?"

"You refused them," Haaskoning answered as if stating the obvious. "Their offer was heavy-handed, but you are an intelligent man who probably figured out a lot of the ins and outs of all this before I even spoke to you today. You know what we offer and what they offer, and you have already turned them down. Power without purpose does not interest you."

"No actually, I don't give a damn about either their power or your purpose," Ryou answered measuredly. "I just want to be left alone to mind my own business."

Haaskoning blinked in surprise for a few seconds, then he scratched his chin, fingernails combing his beard. "Hmm. Well, that may be difficult. Everybody belongs to one camp or the other. But I suppose you have time to think this through carefully and take a measured decision."

"That's what you said last time. What's to stop this Meka- Menka- Ancient one from kidnapping me again?" 

"I am," said Haaskoning. 

Simple words, and there was no change in the elderly man’s composed expression when he said them, yet Ryou, mouth suddenly dry, found himself believing him. 'Useages' had drilled into Ryou that discretion and shielding one's mental signature in the higher planes was the ABC of any magian's defense, but Ryou hadn't really considered what that implied, since he'd never met another self-declared magian before Haaskoning. The old man had been applying 'Useages' himself. Unlike the Ancient priest who'd stunk of power, Haaskoning could have been anyone's amiable old grandfather. But for an instant, when he'd said that, Ryou had caught a glimpse of the might that backed up those words. In the higher plane in which their abilities existed, most men were nothing more than molehills, while Ryou, in his current untrained state, was a sizeable hill. Haaskoning...Haaskoning had the power of mountains...

"I think you misunderstand the respective position of our two orders," Haaskoning said. He spoke normally, his aura once more cloaked, an elderly Dutch gentleman with his hands crossed in his lap. The echoes of that presence, that power, still hung in the air like the silence after a bell’s toll, and his soft words sounded louder for it. "The Ancients use their abilities in ways that we have voluntarily forbidden ourselves, and I'm sure that when they had you in their clutches, they made themselves sound very powerful. But they are not. They're parasites living off of the Grand Design, and they survive by carefully avoiding us. Indeed, the only reason we do not destroy them is because the kind of open warfare this would entail would endanger what we have sworn to protect."

That was at least reassuring to know. Ryou had figured out that the Ancients had lied to him, or at least underestimated the Per Gathas, when Haaskoning had shown up this morning to tell a concerned Leyam and an increasingly frantic and guilt-ridden Ryou that getting rid of Darius's curse was really 'not that big of a deal', then proceeding to do so in an hour. Ryou now suspected Haaskoning could have done the work entirely by himself, but had insisted on Ryou doing the job under his supervision in order to arm Ryou against this kind of thing happening again. Ryou wondered if Meka-whoever back there had deliberately lied to him when he’d said Haaskoning couldn’t help, or if the man simply could not believe that anyone, including a servant of the Gathas who accepted to live a mortal life, could do something that he himself could not. 

"The Ancients normally stay hidden within the Roman Empire and conquered territories, scheming their little schemes and doing their little magic, but they are very careful to stay under our radar and not provoke us. If they allied themselves fully with Rome, things would get messy, so it's fortunate that they despise everybody and refuse to stoop to forming alliances. Every once in awhile in the past three thousand years, they have broken this unspoken covenant, and tried to move against us or actively take over some country in various ways. It seems Assyria was next on the menu if you and Lord Ghan had agreed to their proposal."

"Fat chance."

"I'm sure they thought they were making the both of you a very good deal," said Haaskoning dryly. "As I said, they're rather cut off from the way normal people think. Well, it is obvious that once again, they have crossed a line. Not when they kidnapped you - I'm afraid that magians are considered fair game under the conventions of this cold war of ours. But trying to kill Lord Ghan and blame _us_...We have still not found out which of their leaders thought of that - certainly not Menkaperreseneb. That was crude but also clever and messy and bolder than they are wont. It could be an indication of some powerful new man rising to prominence within their order. I will be looking into that very carefully. But the alliance Menkaperreseneb offered Lord Ghan was also outside allowable bounds and now, if you will grant me a favor, the Per Gathas have the means to strike back."

"Favor?"

“When we first met, I gave you my pendant. I would very much like to have it back.”

Ryou kept a tight hold on the sharp “ _What?_ ” that tried to slip out at that point. He was too much of a businessman to show surprise that easily, and though it was true that the meeting rooms of Ujiie S&T were far away and getting further all the time, Leyam had kept him on his toes in that department quite adequately. Expressionless, Ryou dug out the pendant he’d been wearing all this time, slipped it out over his neck and held it out. Just not quite far enough. Haaskoning, who’d reached out his hand, measured the distance between it and the pendant, and the look in Ryou’s eyes, and settled back in his chair.

“Maybe I should explain.”

“Please do.”

“I mentioned that Menkaperreseneb is in a bubble of pseudo-reality beyond the Veil, yes? We need to find him in order to neutralize him, and it’s not that easy. Andrap called me to Mooncrest the moment you disappeared with Lord Ghan, you know. I was there mere hours after your kidnapping. But even with our combined powers, we could not follow you in order to help you. We could do nothing but hold the initial breach in the circle open, in case you managed to make your way back. Paths, particularly those breaching into and out of the Veil, create a lot of, ah, unwanted attention from the denizens of other planes. You may remember from that nightmare you had in Essin. Passers walk the Paths that exist naturally in the Veil – and even they can sometimes run into things that are quite dangerous in those uncertain areas. Magians, who can create new Paths, have to be even more careful. So when Menkaperreseneb took you, he naturally closed the Path behind you, very professionally I might add. I couldn’t see much beyond the first few steps. But even if I’d been able to follow the Path he’d created, I would have been stuck once outside fractional space – the spiral, you remember I mentioned it last time we met. Beyond the Grand Design...well, the rules go out the window. The bubbles the Ancients create out of their old existence can be anywhere, in any plane, hidden amongst an infinity of them. You cannot cast your senses across this- this multiverse of dimensions. No human has ever had that kind of perception, not even the greatest prophet our race has produced. Unless you can align yourself with that plane’s existence, you cannot even sense its presence. Unless you know where to look, you can never find it.”

“So how are you going to ‘neutralize’ him?”

“The pendant you carried. All the Per Gathas of the highest circles carry one, since we, ah, tend to occasionally go to odd places, and do odd things. Sometimes we do not survive them, and a Passer finds our body washed up in the water bisecting one of their Circles. The pendant contains a crystal embedded within the gold, a very pure crystal with properties we have developed. The Outlander magians in Asha Mainyu call them Tears of the Prophet, very poetic and mythical. But us Inlanders call it the Black Box, which will give you a better idea of what it’s used for.”

“You can use it to find out where I’ve been.”

“Correct. The kind of gross displacement through the Veil you were subjected to will have warped the purity of the crystal, much in the same way it must have warped your perception and mind for a few moments. A human mind recovers, heals. A crystal does not. The flaw in it can be interpreted, and give us an idea of where you were taken when you went beyond the Veil.”

“I see. I really was bait, wasn’t I,” said Ryou, even as he deposited the pendant into Haaskoning’s outstretched hand. 

“Yes, but this protects you too,” Haaskoning assured him, quickly putting the pendant away into a metallic box he’d produced from inside his tabard. It looked like it was lined with lead. “Menkaperreseneb is going to be destroyed. It was going to happen sooner or later. That creature has been alive, if you can call it that, for over four hundred years. His thought processes have calcified. Because of their loose hierarchy, we’re only cutting off one head of the hydra, but it’s the most powerful one to date, so this is definitely going to hurt them. When they recover, however, you will be in their line of fire.”

“That sounds very scary.” 

“...It is,” said Haaskoning, eyeing Ryou in surprise at the latter’s obviously unimpressed tone of voice. “You say you will not join them?”

“Never.”

“Then you have two choices: join us or go back Inlands. They cannot cross there easily, they have no interests there, and they feel very uncomfortable away from their power base.”

“When did you cross over from the Netherlands?”

Haaskoning was caught short by the abrupt change of subject, but he answered gamely. "It was in the spring of 1980, while I was on a business trip to Liège. Much the same as you, I was driving back to my hotel in the middle of the night, mostly asleep at the wheel and dreaming of a house which would exist in several dimensions at once, and all the advantage therein." It was said with a smile that was rueful and also a little nostalgic. 

“Did you know the Berlin Wall fell since you last were there?”

“I've heard of this, yes.”

“Politics and business have changed a lot. They are no longer black and white, Us or Them.”

“I...don't think I see your point.”

"My point," said Ryou, pushing up his glasses, "is that we're only just beginning to talk."

 

 

“I admit I am as confused as Blessed Haaskoning,” said Leyam with a perplexed look. “I don't understand this...this 'freelance contractor' notion either.”

Ryou settled down in the opposite seat. They were back in Leyam’s apartment after that evening’s feast. Most dinners held by Leyam’s court were formal affairs. This evening had been particularly ceremonious and grand to celebrate the ‘return’ of his brother, as well as the presence of a Per Gathas notable. But now Haaskoning had departed, the Assyrian nobility had been left to nurse their cups and argue lineage and provincial borders, the King had retired, and Ryou finally had the time and privacy to bring Leyam up to speed with the latest developments. They were alone. Nicodeme was organizing a masseur and a bedtime companion for Leyam’s nightly routine, and Darius was out and about, talking to his men, giving them one more reassurance that he was back to normal. He was also getting them ready for another attempt at rejoining the army in Ayengosor. Because the struggle against Rome and its allies was still ongoing, though it now seemed a little secondary. The trip which had been so abruptly derailed had to be taken, for the same reasons as before, though this time Ryou and Darius would not only make sure that the Mooncrest Path was open towards their destination, but that Andrap and possibly Haaskoning himself was with them from the first step of the trip to the last. 

“Is it like a mercenary?”

“Not really, no. It’s more...hmm... More like the way you and one of the Free Cities can be said to be allied. You're much stronger, but they still bring some usefulness to you, a usefulness that would be lost if you expended the effort to conquer them. So you help them discreetly, you maintain good relations, while on their end they can get away with acts of aggression towards Roman allies that you could not, since you and Rome still pretend to be on speaking terms.”

Leyam’s brow wrinkled. “That seems an adequate description, but how does it relate to you?”

“I do not want to join the Per Gathas. I have no interest in their struggle against the Ancients, or preserving their Grand Design. I have agreed not to use my powers to benefit Assyria, since that would lead the Per Gathas to shut us all down. However, I have the right to defend myself if the Ancients try to harm Darius or me again. And since Darius is intrinsically tied to your reign and to this country, well...I’m going to assume I have some latitude over what I can and cannot defend with my magian abilities.”

“...Sounds like the deal is mostly in your favor. Why would Haaskoning let you off so easily?”

“He will benefit from this too,” Ryou said dryly, “and already has. To start with, even if I’m not going to join the Per Gathas, I am going to be somewhat allied to them. I have to learn more about my powers. It’s not just this ancient war, there's lots of other dangers for magian out there. I’ll automatically be closer to whichever camp is willing to teach me. I would prefer the Per Gathas, of course, I am definitely more philosophically aligned with them, but if they give me nothing to defend myself with, I'll strike a deal with the Ancients out of self preservation.”

“Haaskoning bought that?” Leyam asked with a shrewd glance at Ryou that said the King, for his part, did not. He knew what Ryou thought of the Ancients.

“He could not afford to do otherwise. Whether I like to admit it or not, it seems I have a lot of power and innate abilities,” sighed Ryou. “It means the Per Gathas and the Ancients both want me to join them. Even more than that, though, they do not want me joining the other team. Haaskoning cannot afford to be heavy handed in this. He’s hoping to reel me in some day, I am sure. He’ll make sure I stay alive and on their side of the conflict in the meantime.”

“Either that, or he’ll kill you,” said Leyam, before popping a fig from the after-dinner fruit platter into his mouth. “That’s what I’d do,” he added as he chewed.

“I somehow doubt so, My King,” Ryou said, to Leyam’s amusement; there weren’t many people in the entire Pariya region with the gall and liberty to correct him, and it seemed to tickle him when Ryou did so. “You wouldn’t destroy a powerful weapon unless you were sure it was more likely to turn against you than serve you. The Per Gathas are the same.” Plus slightly more civilized, Ryou inwardly added, though he was not ready to bet his life that the Per Gathas would let their Inland or Zoroastrian ethics get in the way of preserving their Grand Design. “Needless to say, I’m going to have to tread carefully, but unless I cross a line, the Per Gathas will not harm me. No, it’s the Ancients who are going to try to kill me. And that’s to the advantage of the Per Gathas, since it will help them to pinpoint these more aggressive elements. Haaskoning and his colleagues cannot strike out directly against these Ancients because they want the world to ignore the very existence of this war they’re engaged in. The Per Gathas are the great stabilizing influence in the Outlands. If it became known that somebody can challenge them...Someone not as attached to neutrality and rules as they are...You can see where that could get very messy. Nobody could predict the results with any certainty, which is why both the Per Gathas and their enemy have kept this fight in the shadows for over three millennia. But now, some new cabal within the ranks of the Ancients is trying to strike at the established order actively, and the Per Gathas are short on discreet means of stopping this from happening. This is where I come in. Whether the Ancients intend to take a shot at me directly, or just take aim at the Alliance, they’ll probably try to remove me first as a precautionary measure. If they break cover, I can move against them as an independent agent, and the Per Gathas can back me up from a distance, lending me the firepower while staying hidden within my shadow. I’m going to be the lightning rod, as it were. Ah, you don’t know what that means. I’ll-“

“You’ll be the goat in their lion hunt, I get it, and though it’s buying you your independence, I think the price may be high. You better hope Haaskoning prizes you and your abilities as much as you seem to think. Now I see where your earlier analogy comes in...But this means that, for all you have no interest in their struggle, you're still allied to the Sons of the Path. You've implicated yourself in his war by default, the same way you’ve implicated yourself in our fight against the Imperium by hopping into bed with my brother.”

Ryou, quite used to Leyam’s inappropriate comments about his love life by now, merely shrugged. “As the saying goes, choose your friends well, because your enemies will choose you.”

“In view of what you face, some would say you could have chosen your friends a little more wisely.”

“That kind of wisdom leads to places I would rather not go. Hell, if I was wise, I'd have stayed Inland. Sometimes you have to go with your gut and hack out your own path your own way.”

“You know,” groused Leyam, “I was hoping some of your restraint would rub off on my wild-headed brother, not the other way around.”

“Sorry,” said Ryou, unrepentant. 

Leyam judged him moodily over the rim of his cup of warmed wine. “You seem overall satisfied for someone who just dropped right into the middle of two separate wars.”

“They're not all that separate...but yes, oddly enough. Maybe I’m in trouble, but it's trouble of my own choosing.” 

It would be challenging, but Ryou found himself looking forward to those challenges, with allies at his back, Darius at his side and this feeling of anticipation before him, something he’d not felt in a long time. 

“You're as nuts as my brother.”

“Yes, that was the other possible conclusion,” said Ryou, helping himself to one of the figs.

“What?”

“Nothing, just thinking out loud. Good night, My King.” 

Ryou walked away from Leyam's simmering curiosity and went to see what Darius was doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's done: all the previously written arcs are now archived. The new arc starts next week, though I'll probably only be posting every other weekend after that, some parts are not finished yet, and the arcs after that are only sketched out at this point.


End file.
